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- [00:02]
Paul Stamets
Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out.
- [00:04]
Joe Rogan
The Joe Rogan experience.
- [00:06]
Paul Stamets
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
- [00:12]
Joe Rogan
We up?
- [00:13]
Paul Stamets
Yeah.
- [00:15]
Joe Rogan
Put them headphones on. Let's rock and roll. Paul, good to see you, sir.
- [00:18]
Paul Stamets
Good to see you, Joe.
- [00:19]
Joe Rogan
What's happening? How you doing? Book number eight, huh?
- [00:23]
Paul Stamets
Book number eight. Yeah.
- [00:24]
Joe Rogan
Who would have known? There's so many books to be written on mushrooms.
- [00:27]
Paul Stamets
Well, this is state of the art taxonomy. Psilocybin mushrooms in natural habitat covers 60 species all over the world. But it also shows not only historical use, which people are surprised. They've been used in India and Europe. In South Africa, a new species was just found, Psilocybin maluti. But the Suthu province have been using it obviously for hundreds of years. We know this because they have songs. So it's really interesting when indigenous people of using psilocybin mushrooms and scientists quote, discover them and give them a Latin binomial. But the psilocybin mushroom revolution is happening all over the world right now. I never expected it to be this big. And the Rand report came out this past year. 3% of Americans tripped on psilocybin in 2023, it's only 3, 3%. That's 8 million. I know. I would agree with you because how many people would admit it? Right, right. Probably under reporting. Oh, for sure. So it seems to be, I think, a revolution for the freedom of consciousness and it's crossing all political boundaries, all religious boundaries.
- [01:33]
Joe Rogan
Well, it's happening here in Texas for sure because of the ibogaine initiative. And what's happening with Governor Rick Perry, who is former Republican governor of Texas, who is all in on this.
- [01:44]
Paul Stamets
He's a, he's a great guy. I've talked to him backstage a few times and he's the type of person that, that I really admire because even though we may have political differences or different cultural backgrounds, there's. We're joined together with a common purpose of trying to help people.
- [02:02]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, well, he's not ideologically, ideologically captured. Like he realized that he was wrong and that his position on this was based on ignorance. So he educated himself and completely turned around, did a 180 and now is an advocate. And it's helped a lot of people. I mean, it's tremendous benefit to veterans and people with PTSD and, you know, coming back from the war. And it's one of the only things that's been shown to really get these.
- [02:27]
Paul Stamets
People straight that in psilocybin and yeah, my heart really goes out. And this is. I'm sort of little left of center. So my friends will be surprised. But my heart goes out to law enforcement. Can you imagine stopping a car on a stormy night at 2 in the morning?
- [02:42]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [02:42]
Paul Stamets
And the window comes down and you have two seconds to make a decision.
- [02:46]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [02:47]
Paul Stamets
You do that hundreds of times. The likelihood of having one mistake is very high. And having one very bad day, define your life for the rest of your life is not right. Because then if you can't resolve those issues as a soldier, as a law enforcement, as a doctor who makes a mistake, if you can't get through that turmoil, that stress, the anger that then can emanate out from your anger at yourself to other people, then this is what psilocybin and ibogaine and other psychedelics, I think really do. They help people forgive themselves and become better people. And once you forgive yourself and become a better person, then everyone is excited about the fact that you've changed. Yeah.
- [03:31]
Joe Rogan
And imagine the world that we could be living in if this experience was available to so many of the people that are committing crimes. So many of these people who have never had a psychiatrist, any kind of a psychedelic experience have never really confronted their own reality in that way. How many of them would change their ways? I would imagine a great deal.
- [03:53]
Paul Stamets
You bring up a very important point that I've been thinking about a lot. We talk about using psychedelics and psilocybin, other substances for treating people who have trauma, you know, mental illness, you know, addiction issues. But what about the near normals? All of us are somewhat on the spectrum and we go back and forth depending on daily, monthly, yearly activities, events, etc. Etc. But what about prevention? If the return on investment is to reduce addiction and crime and all the other collateral damage that's associated with it, then it would save hundreds of billions of dollars. Hundreds of billions of dollars. Psilocybin should be made free, I think, you know, as a citizen's right to have access and the government should pay for it. It would massively reduce our national debt. It would make our better society reduce. But that's not going to happen, right? That's a dream.
- [04:44]
Joe Rogan
Well, I don't know if that's not going to happen. It's just not going to happen tomorrow. You know, I think we're on a path. If you look at where we stand with marijuana, for instance, like look at Las Vegas is a great example because I remember in the 90s and when we would go to Las Vegas for the UFC in the. I guess, I guess actually it was in the 2000s. It was highly illegal. And, you know, I'd remember the stories from the 70s where people were locked up for their entire lives for, you know, like, an ounce of marijuana in Vegas. They had zero tolerance for it. And I always wondered what that was about, whether that was an anti hippie thing or whether it was in response to the alcohol lobby. Vegas obviously sells a lot of alcohol and anything that would cut back on their profits. You know, this was. We talked about this the other day. The study showed that amongst young people, alcohol consumption is down significantly. Isn't it? Down by like 25%, which by the. Was that.
- [05:46]
Paul Stamets
It's down. I still know the number.
- [05:47]
Joe Rogan
Which, by the way, great thing, you know, that's. That's a good thing, but it's not a good thing for profits. And so. But my point is that how many states now have cannabis as completely legal? I think it's like 19.
- [06:00]
Paul Stamets
Yeah, it's more than a dozen, for sure.
- [06:02]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. I think it's somewhere around then. And then you have medical use, which is in many, many more states. It's just a matter of time before the people in the federal government realize this is a losing battle.
- [06:14]
Paul Stamets
Indeed. And think about the guilt those law enforcement officers must feel. And certainly they must feel, I would hope so, that they know they put somebody in prison for 30 years for an ounce of marijuana when it is now legal in those states.
- [06:26]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [06:26]
Paul Stamets
How do they reconcile that?
- [06:27]
Joe Rogan
How do they. Yeah, well, I mean, PTSD amongst law enforcement is something that's very rarely discussed. We talk about it a lot with soldiers, but one of my friends who was a former Austin PD told me that you see more in your line of duty in a police department than more death, more terrible, terrible things than he ever did when he was in combat. And it's just. It's like every day. Every day you're dealing with shootouts. Every day you're dealing with stabbings. Every day you're dealing with horrific crimes.
- [07:03]
Paul Stamets
And it's just.
- [07:04]
Joe Rogan
Your brain is just overrun with this.
- [07:06]
Paul Stamets
And with firefighters, you know, they're the. Oftentimes the first responders are there first. My partner's a medical doctor in Canada, but she used to be a firefighter. And, yeah, they. Oftentimes the police may not show up for 20 minutes, and they're there. And the things they witness, I mean, things that no, no one should ever witness. But I mean, this is where it's so important that we come together as a society, because I really believe that 98% of people are good and 2% of people are. And I think the can become good people if they have a psychedelic experience. I really think there's progress right now. So much of the media and clickbait journalism, they amplify the extraordinary and things that get eyeballs and attention. But more and more, I think people are. They become more. Have greater wisdom about how they're being manipulated by the media. People come together and, you know, so that's why I like mushroom hunting. Mushroom hunting brings people together. You go out hunting, you have this eureka experience. You don't talk politics. You're excited about the species that you hope to find. And you. You find ones you don't, but they become like friends after a while. When you find a chanterelle, you find a shaggy mane, you find a psilocybe, a psilocybin mushroom. They're, you know, they're that chance encounter, that eureka experience and sharing it, then sharing eating the mushrooms, whether edible or otherwise. I mean, it brings a community of interest together. It's just a really fun thing to do. And there's something I want to mention, Joe, that's really important. I've been to a lot of conferences. I just came back from the Psychedelic Science conference in Denver. Our friend Rick Doblin, 8,500 people there. But what I really find an extraordinary way of taking iPhones and droids. And all these kids are just addicted to their phones, right? They're not going out in nature. So there is a called nature deficit syndrome. It's actually affecting people. But there is an app that I'm just in love with called Inaturalist. It was taught by. Created by a guy named Scott. He just gave a TED talk that was released yesterday. Inaturalists, you can take a phone and you can go out and you can look at a flower, a frog, a mineral, a mushroom. You photograph it, you upload it into the cloud of inaturalist. And they have all these experts, amateurs, trying to tell you what it is. It's a great little debate going back and forth. No, you're right. No, you're right. And then when it hits research grade is when a group of experts come together. Yep, you have copranus kametus. Yep, you have boletus edulis. They agree on identification, but it has fueled the scientific community with all sorts of these citizen scientists finding new species. And it brings people into nature, gets kids excited. And they. And then you can go to Inaturalist right now and you can look around your house or this place to see the reports of birds and mushrooms and Things I just went on to inaturalist yesterday and the golden tops go around Austin. Who knew, you know, because they've been reported now you have zones of privacy, so you don't have to tell them exactly where the mushroom is. And that's probably not a good thing to do if it's a psilocybin mushroom. But you can make a peripheral zone of anonymity. It could be within 2 miles, 5 miles, 10 miles, you know, and that way you can do the report. But some of them have high specificity with lat longs within a few inches. But it's so exciting in the field of biology and mineralogy and ornithology, et cetera, to have all these citizen scientists out there with their phones. And then every year all over the world now there's called bioblitzes, where several hundred people literally come together, they'll go into a park, they have all their iPhones and droids, and they photograph everything and they upload it to inaturalists to look at species diversity. This has revolutionized the field of biology, I think it revolutionizes bringing children and young people back into nature. And you, then you build a community. You're not talking about politics, you're talking about nature. And what did you find? And holy moly, I never knew there's a blue mushroom or something like that. So it's, it's inspiring to see the kids get so excited about this and adults and so this is, you know, I'm a.
- [11:31]
Joe Rogan
That's very cool.
- [11:31]
Paul Stamets
Yeah, very cool.
- [11:32]
Joe Rogan
How many new species get discovered?
- [11:35]
Paul Stamets
Oh, thousands every year. Thousands every year now. Really? Thousands and thousands. There's 223 known species of psilocybin mushrooms and about, wow, I'd say 10, 10 of them in the past two years has come from citizen scientists, quote, unquote, amateurs who found it, who uploaded it to inaturalists.
- [11:55]
Joe Rogan
So if they find a new species, like, how do they determine if it's a completely new species, how do they determine that it's psilocybin? How do they determine where it's from?
- [12:05]
Paul Stamets
Excellent question. The psilocybin species localized in the genus Psilocybe, which has the most psilocybin species? We just know from genetic associations, either in the clade, the group that has psilocybin species, and the DNA analysis shows that they fit right into this cluster, then we have high confidence. But if a mushroom has gills, you know, and it bruises bluish and has purple brown spores, those three things need to be true, then 95% probability sulcide mushroom. What species it is becomes more debatable. But psilocybin mushrooms are very hard to find, with the exception of the golden top. And there's another one called penniless Sinusens. They're growing pastures, they're easier to find. But most of these sulci mushrooms are hidden in the landscape.
- [12:52]
Joe Rogan
How so?
- [12:54]
Paul Stamets
Well, I just had a 70 year old man write me from Vermont and he has found Psilocybies seri lippies. And he wrote a classic letter to me that many people have written. I have looked for these mushrooms for years. I couldn't find them. And then I found a few and I looked around and they were everywhere, hiding in plain sight. And so now he knows. With Seri lippies in Vermont, he knows. It's just I can't believe how obvious they are to me and how unobvious they were to me before when I took Michael Pollan out on a mushroom hunt and in his book, how to Change youe Mind, when I said I took two steps out of this little cabin we were at, and I go, there's one. He goes, where? I go right there. He goes where? I go right there, Michael. And then I picked it up and he goes, wtf? How can you tell this is a Sulzai mushroom? I go, well, it's like I'm kind of an expert. Well, it's like meeting a friend. It's like meeting you. I know. Joe Rogan, right? I know your face, I know your personality. I'm reacquainted with you. But psilocybin mushrooms, Wait a minute.
- [14:01]
Joe Rogan
So like seeing it, you're reacquainted with it.
- [14:03]
Paul Stamets
Seeing it repeatedly. And being familiarized with it gives you a memory of it, a pattern recognition. So when it goes away, you still have that pattern recognition, memory to memory map back onto the landscape around you. It's true with morels too. This is a very common thing. People don't see morels. They find one or two, then suddenly they jump out of the landscape. It's how your brain works with pattern recognition. So many of these species are hidden in a landscape, but they're actually quite common, but you just can't see them.
- [14:32]
Joe Rogan
Got it. And you're accustomed to seeing them, but you're not saying like that you feel something from them. You're just saying recognize them visually.
- [14:42]
Paul Stamets
Well, you're waxing into the spiritual.
- [14:43]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, that's what I'm asking.
- [14:45]
Paul Stamets
Many people feel that the mushrooms call to them.
- [14:47]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [14:48]
Paul Stamets
So this is true in the Mastothe tradition, you know, in My book, I go deeply into the mastothe heritage of using psilocybin mushrooms. And one of the things was it really embedded with Christianity. After the Spaniards came, 1516 and 1519, 1521, they brought in cattle. And very quickly Christianity swept through Mesoamerica, specifically in Mexico. And there is a friend of mine who's a PhD called Joe Torrey, was in Oaxaca and just found in a church a cross from the 15th century, 1500s, I mean, and soon after the conquistadors and Spanish arrived. And in the center of the cross are psilocybin mushrooms. So Christianity has a long, deep rooted history with psilocybin mushroom use in Mesoamerica.
- [15:54]
Joe Rogan
Well, there's that ancient depiction of Adam and Eve from.
- [15:59]
Paul Stamets
That's more debatable in my mind. Yeah. But here it is. It is. Thank you. This is from Joe latorre's work.
- [16:07]
Joe Rogan
Look at that.
- [16:08]
Paul Stamets
That's a basket with mushrooms, with three mushrooms in the. In the basket. And there, there is Psilocybe mexicana. And so the mushrooms are phenotypically correct, but there's clearly a mushrooms in a basket. Can. Can the other slide show with a full cross, Joey? I'm not sure.
- [16:27]
Joe Rogan
Did you know Jack Hare?
- [16:29]
Paul Stamets
Yes.
- [16:29]
Joe Rogan
When Jack was alive. Before he died, one of the things that he was working on was a book connecting psilocybin mushrooms and Christianity. And he had this massive collection of ancient images, paintings, all these different things. A lot of them were these religious depictions of people that were naked, dancing under the like, it was like a transparent mushroom shape and they were dancing like something that would indicate that they were under the trance and they were dancing.
- [16:59]
Paul Stamets
Yeah. This is an example where there's so many different. You could have a hundred different potential representations.
- [17:08]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [17:08]
Paul Stamets
They're not all going to be correct the one, but a few of them are. In this example here, one that clearly is in the Mazate tradition, it's called syncretism. When you have a foreign influence, in this case a religion coming into an indigenous people, they merge. And they still continue their indigenous practices under the umbrella of protection, in this case of Christianity. But in the Mazatec tradition, they believe the tears of Christ is where the mushrooms would appear. They believe the mushrooms were the body of Christ and therefore you would never boil them. You never. Because you'd be hurting the body of Christ, so you'd only eat them raw or dry.
- [17:52]
Joe Rogan
Oh, interesting.
- [17:52]
Paul Stamets
So really interesting. That's an examp of syncretism. And the great Maria Sabina was a devout Catholic. And when she did her psilocybin ceremonies. She had the Holy Trinity. So that's another example where under the umbrella and from a survival point of view, culturally it makes sense and they adapted. But they found that this sort of merging of indigenous practices and knowledge of psilocybin in Christianity was very compatible. Just was published I think two weeks ago at New York University in Johns Hopkins. They had 24 clergy from, from different faiths, Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism and Muslims. And they have them come in and they did a high doses of psilocybin and they had one group that had delayed didn't do it for six months and the other group did a high dose of psilocybin. It all each of those faiths, the use of psilocybin mushrooms reinforced their belief in their faith. That was really amazing. I think they said 95% said is the most significant experience in the top five of the most significant experiences in their life. So it just. I think psilocybin makes nicer people.
- [19:16]
Joe Rogan
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- [20:34]
Paul Stamets
Yes, it's been postulated by R. Gordon Watson.
- [20:38]
Joe Rogan
I shouldn't say plant.
- [20:39]
Paul Stamets
Yeah. In front of you especially. Thank you very much.
- [20:42]
Joe Rogan
That, that doesn't look like mushrooms.
- [20:44]
Paul Stamets
They do look like mushrooms and like.
- [20:46]
Joe Rogan
I couldn't imagine it being anything else.
- [20:48]
Paul Stamets
Well, I mean, here's an example that basically artists become authors of field guides and art you know, how much can you tell the public without violating your oath of secrecy? And so symbology. But yes, there's a cap and a stem, and they come up in clusters. That looks like a psilocybin mushroom. Some people say it's amn miscarriage because of the dots. But those of us who have grown Psilocybe cubensis, when they're very fresh, they have dots on them. They're very ephemeral. They got washed away.
- [21:21]
Joe Rogan
So, yes, and you would see the dots, obviously, if it's still in the ground.
- [21:25]
Paul Stamets
If it's in the ground, it's very fresh. Bacillus eye mushrooms bruise bluish. And so this is where we could get lost in a debate of interpretation. But all these representations are not false. Some of these representations are extremely strong based on the evidence. And for instance, the psilocybin mushrooms that we found on the pyramids in Egypt, they are clearly psilocybies. Not myself, but other Egyptologists have also published on this find.
- [21:58]
Joe Rogan
Those, Jamie, those are fascinating because I don't think until fairly recently, within the last few decades, it was understood that they were using psilocybin. I think there was some confusion as to what, if anything, like they were drinking. Blue lotus, I think, was one of them.
- [22:16]
Paul Stamets
The blue lotus is a water lily. Where do water lilies grow?
- [22:19]
Joe Rogan
There it is.
- [22:20]
Paul Stamets
The water lilies grow near ponds.
- [22:22]
Joe Rogan
That's so clearly psilocybin.
- [22:24]
Paul Stamets
And this is the goddess Hathor, the goddess of the cow, by the way. The goddess of the cow. And that's a vase. And anyone who's grown oyster mushrooms or psilocybin mushrooms know that you substrate into a vase like that with openings and mushrooms will come out of the holes. And so that natural culture technique of collecting cow patty. So cows go to ponds to drink. The blue lotus grows in ponds. The blue lotus is blue. The sulcide mushrooms turn blue. The mushrooms are golden in color. Gold and blue colors are sacred in Egyptology, in ancient Egyptian culture. So now, I was not the first person to discover this, actually. I saw this from an article that was published by Azim Abdel, a friend of mine, a mycologist in Egypt, who presented it at a conference.
- [23:14]
Joe Rogan
How long ago was this?
- [23:15]
Paul Stamets
This was. Well, this is over 2,000 years of age.
- [23:18]
Joe Rogan
No, no, I mean when they.
- [23:19]
Paul Stamets
2016.
- [23:20]
Joe Rogan
When they brought us to the 2016.
- [23:22]
Paul Stamets
2016.
- [23:23]
Joe Rogan
That's kind of crazy, isn't it?
- [23:24]
Paul Stamets
It is. And then Kalindi, the great Kalindi from Detroit, he unfortunately died of COVID but he also from his African heritage also, you know, and he was rediscovering his African heritage. And this is called re indigenization, rediscovering that which your ancestors practiced, even though the linear transition of knowledge may have been cut. But this is taxonomically accurate for growing Psilocybe cubensis. And it grows on cow dung. Cow goes to ponds. If you went to get the water lily, you'd run into this constantly. Now, this, the hathor, where this temple is now, they get less than 1 millimeter of rain a year. And the Nile used to be flooding all the time. It was a breadbasket of the world, but they built the dams. And so the climate change. So the modern Egyptologists have no reference. And so when you have climate change, the ecosystem changes. And the scientists of day don't have the familiarity as the experts thousands of years ago.
- [24:33]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [24:33]
Paul Stamets
So they become rare, they become scarce, and the generational knowledge is lost. But now there's a real big re indigenization movement in Egypt combining the blue.
- [24:41]
Joe Rogan
Lotus with what is the psychedelic compound in the blue lotus?
- [24:46]
Paul Stamets
You know, that's a debatable thing. There's a really complex chemistry there. I'm not an expert on that, but I've talked to my other friends who are experts. There seems to be an entourage effect of multiple agents, so I can't really speak authoritative to that, But I have been told that there are several active ingredients, and they think the entourage effect of them together creates this heightened state of awareness. And I think that as an admixture with psilocybin, makes a lot of sense.
- [25:13]
Joe Rogan
Are contemporary people taking blue lotus?
- [25:15]
Paul Stamets
Yes.
- [25:16]
Joe Rogan
Really?
- [25:16]
Paul Stamets
Yes.
- [25:16]
Joe Rogan
Is there, like a community of people?
- [25:18]
Paul Stamets
Massive community, but because blue lotus now has become scarce, because ponds are scarce. So I put out there a reward of $1,000 for anyone who can find, you know, DNA of soul mushrooms and any of the wells or ancient ponds used to be ponds in the Egypt area. Because if we can find the DNA in the vase and the substrate, then we can actually prove this theory.
- [25:42]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [25:42]
Paul Stamets
It's more than a hypothesis, because I've met many Egyptian mycologists now who absolutely believe this is true. Not scientifically, but sort of intuitively from their culture. This makes a lot of sense.
- [25:56]
Joe Rogan
It does make a lot of sense. And if you've got it on these.
- [25:59]
Paul Stamets
Hieroglyphs, and they were known as the flesh of the gods, which is the very same name when translated from Te Anakatl from Mesoamerica, the Psalciaba mushrooms were known as flesh of the gods. So it's interesting in Both sides of the world, they had the same interpretation. Mushrooms were not allowed back in this time to be picked by commoners. They were only reserved for the royalty.
- [26:25]
Joe Rogan
Oh, boy. Doesn't it always work out that way?
- [26:28]
Paul Stamets
Yeah, it seems to.
- [26:30]
Joe Rogan
Another thing that's really fascinating is depictions of ancient saints and even Jesus Christ with a halo and that the halo is essentially the bottom of a mushroom. It's a very different halo. When we think about a halo, we think about, like, a Frisbee that's hovering over an angel's head or a saint's head. But the ancient depictions of them weren't that. The ancient depictions of them. You saw those ribs that made it look like the bottom of a psilocybin mushroom.
- [26:54]
Paul Stamets
I didn't know that.
- [26:55]
Joe Rogan
You didn't know that? No. Oh, come on. I'm teaching you this. Come on. Jamie will pull up these images, but these images of Christ of. There's many different religious figures, and they have this halo that's very different than the more modern halo. The modern halo being this, like, circle. This is not a circle. It's a circle, but it's a mushroom. It's essentially. They're explaining these godly holy people were under the influence of psilocybin.
- [27:24]
Paul Stamets
I think what we can't. Not just me, what we can't prove some of these ideas today. What we can prove is, like, the Johns Hopkins New York University study that religious belief systems are enhanced through the use of psilocybin, which totally makes sense. It makes sense. So we can argue about the past, but we have really good scientific methodology now for analyzing the effects of psilocybin. And it's profound. It's profound.
- [27:51]
Joe Rogan
You got any of those images?
- [27:53]
Paul Stamets
It's not.
- [27:55]
Joe Rogan
What's coming up really is us talking about it before and a bunch of pictures of mushrooms. I was trying to find out. There's. There's some better ones. I know, but it's not.
- [28:02]
Paul Stamets
I didn't.
- [28:03]
Joe Rogan
You can't find them. I wasn't getting. Man. The government's pulled them off the Internet, man. That's not one. Yeah, that's. That's. The. The ones that I've seen are far clearer than that. Just show you there. Yes, those. Like, look at that one. Which is crazy that you have to go to us.
- [28:22]
Paul Stamets
That's. I can see the one on the left.
- [28:25]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. I mean, that. That essentially looks exactly like that.
- [28:29]
Paul Stamets
I've. I've never seen that.
- [28:30]
Joe Rogan
That's crazy that you can't find that.
- [28:32]
Paul Stamets
Anymore.
- [28:32]
Joe Rogan
And we clearly found it in the past because we talked about it.
- [28:35]
Paul Stamets
Well, that may be the effect of Joe Rogan. Right. You could just overwhelm the entire Internet with images. So.
- [28:43]
Joe Rogan
I mean, look at the bottom of that one in particular. The one in the center.
- [28:47]
Paul Stamets
Yeah.
- [28:47]
Joe Rogan
I mean that, that looks exactly like that halo.
- [28:51]
Paul Stamets
Yeah. That's not.
- [28:52]
Joe Rogan
Which totally makes sense. Look at that. Okay, there's one. Look at that image.
- [28:56]
Paul Stamets
Yeah.
- [28:56]
Joe Rogan
So this is the old school halo. The old school halo clearly looks like the bottom of.
- [29:02]
Paul Stamets
I'm blown away.
- [29:03]
Joe Rogan
You're blown away.
- [29:04]
Paul Stamets
Hiding in plain sight. Right.
- [29:05]
Joe Rogan
I can't believe that I'm teaching you this.
- [29:08]
Paul Stamets
I am.
- [29:09]
Joe Rogan
I can't believe you. Who did? How come nobody told you this?
- [29:12]
Paul Stamets
I don't know.
- [29:12]
Joe Rogan
You said you knew Jack. You knew Jack when he was alive. This was like his primary concern towards the end of his life.
- [29:18]
Paul Stamets
He was.
- [29:18]
Joe Rogan
He was working on a book.
- [29:20]
Paul Stamets
Yeah. I mean, you know, the limitation of life. Unfortunately, we have all these great people who pass when they're at the. At the peak of their knowledge, you know, and that's, that's the other thing that I think psilocybin has really informed me is that Joe Rogan and Paul Stanley are talking. Jamie is there. But we have such a thin slice of reality. And when you're on psilocybin, the. The unanimity of universal consciousness to be involved in something you realize is so large.
- [29:53]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [29:53]
Paul Stamets
Did you see that? The galactic images from the Rubin telescope that came out yesterday?
- [29:58]
Joe Rogan
No, I did not.
- [29:59]
Paul Stamets
Millions and millions of new galaxies. Literally millions of new galaxies. I think 2, 100 new asteroids in near Earth orbit.
- [30:08]
Joe Rogan
Oh, fun.
- [30:09]
Paul Stamets
Oh, fun.
- [30:10]
Joe Rogan
Well, there's already 900,000 of them.
- [30:12]
Paul Stamets
Yeah. So there's. But this has just happened.
- [30:14]
Joe Rogan
Wow.
- [30:15]
Paul Stamets
But this is. Yeah. Just got released. The largest telescope in the world and there are millions of galaxies. Millions of galaxies. And so from my experience, which I would admit I came from a Christian background, so my first times on sulcide mushrooms is very Christ oriented. And then as I got more and more into the psilocybin experience, I realized that this is just this concept that we live in this great expanse and I'm assembly of molecules, so are you. We didn't exist before we were born. You know, we will disassemble, decompose, and we'll go back into the cosmic dust. And this is part of the continuum of existence. We all exist. All, all the time. Forever.
- [31:01]
Joe Rogan
Forever. Can I ask you this? What do you think happens to consciousness?
- [31:05]
Paul Stamets
I think that. Think from a mechanical perspective, we might be looking at, have the constructs of consciousness that is analogous to the. To the Model T Ford, you know, And I think as we expand our knowledge sets and become more informed, we see how much there is out there. I think that psilocybin mushrooms and other psychedelics, and this is why I think religions are very much attracted to. This is a portal to expand the horizons of your imaginations. That there is a consciousness that far exceeds that which you can comprehend. My mother was a charismatic Christian.
- [31:47]
Joe Rogan
And what is a charismatic?
- [31:50]
Paul Stamets
Well, she's an evangelical. She speaks in tongues. She was a leader. She was very much into this, like, mom, really different side of her. But we had an interesting conversation. I said, mom, you believe God is omnipotent, right? She goes, absolutely. I said, you believe God is all knowledgeable? She goes, absolutely. You believe that humans are fallible and we're not all knowledgeable? She goes, yep, I do. I said, then can you accept the fact that our concept of God is inferior to God's definition by your own thinking, that no matter how we think of God will be inferior to the enormity of the concept? So. And she admitted that. So we're fallible. We don't have the capacity to understand the enormity of consciousness in which we are embedded, of which we are a tiny part. So this brings me to a subject I really wanted to talk to you about.
- [32:49]
Joe Rogan
Okay.
- [32:50]
Paul Stamets
And that is artificial intelligence. And I know you've spent a lot of time on this, but. Yeah, recently. I want to introduce a new concept.
- [32:58]
Joe Rogan
Okay. Okay.
- [32:59]
Paul Stamets
I'm a deadhead.
- [33:01]
Joe Rogan
I could never tell.
- [33:02]
Paul Stamets
Never tell. I went to the sphere, you know.
- [33:06]
Joe Rogan
I bet it was amazing.
- [33:07]
Paul Stamets
It was incredible.
- [33:08]
Joe Rogan
The visuals were insane.
- [33:10]
Paul Stamets
Fantastic.
- [33:10]
Joe Rogan
What a great venue to see.
- [33:12]
Paul Stamets
It's a great venue. It's just revolutionized music festivals, I think, for.
- [33:16]
Joe Rogan
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Paul Stamets
Call 1-800-GAMBLER in New York.
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Joe Rogan
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Paul Stamets
Responsibly on behalf of Boothill Casino and Res. 21 and over. Age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction. Void.
- [34:49]
Joe Rogan
In Ontario, new customers only. Bonus bets expire 168 hours after issuance.
- [34:53]
Paul Stamets
For additional terms and responsible gaming resources.
- [34:56]
Joe Rogan
See DKNG co Audio.
- [34:59]
Paul Stamets
So there is I, I bought there's something called Postcards from Earth, and I'd heard a lot about it. It's a matinee in the afternoon before the big concerts. And it's great flying through around the Earth, through the old growth forests and volcanoes. So we went there and we got an early bird ticket, which allowed us to talk to an AI robot. So I thought, oh, this is my opportunity now. Two years ago, I got the Disruptor Award at Synbio Beta, 2200 nerdy scientists. I mean, these are top nerds. And I was so surprised that I got the Disruptor Award because I'm kind of a natural products kind of guy. But I'm greatly honored. So I posited the question then, will AI may never be able to write an algorithm for random acts of kindness? And I'm thinking back my life, maybe yours, maybe Jamie's, maybe most people out there, you are here today because of random acts of kindness. Your great grandfather, great grandmother, your father, your grandfather, grandmother. Is that reaching out of a hand in a time of need by a random act of kindness from a stranger, that probably created a lot of relationships. And random acts of kindness was not transactional, where you genuinely feel something for someone not expecting to have something in return, and you've reached out. I think that's why many, many, if not most people, their lineages can be traced to a random act of kindness. So then I went to Las Vegas, went to the Sphere I had this idea, you know, I can ask this robot. So I asked this robot, what robot? It was, I think it was a chat GPT run, but I'm not sure.
- [36:46]
Joe Rogan
That was at the sphere.
- [36:47]
Paul Stamets
At the sphere. Okay. There's a robot I talked to.
- [36:50]
Joe Rogan
Oh, this is so creepy. Look at that face. Oh, my God, it's so creepy.
- [36:55]
Paul Stamets
Okay, very creepy. So I asked robot, look at that robot.
- [36:58]
Joe Rogan
That's so creepy.
- [36:59]
Paul Stamets
I asked the robot. Given that so many of us here, here today because of random acts of kindness of our ancestors and we've invented artificial intelligence and we're traceable to random acts of kindness, how will artificial intelligence incorporate random acts of kindness in the future? Good question. The robot took an unusually long time to answer. It was like a very long time. And the robot came back going, why would humans do that? It's far more efficient to have a return on your investment transactionally. Why would. It's inefficient to have random acts of kindness. Boom. Blew me away.
- [37:45]
Joe Rogan
Did you film any of this?
- [37:46]
Paul Stamets
Yeah, we had. We did film this. A friend of mine has a film of it and then I need to see that.
- [37:51]
Joe Rogan
And then that robot needs to be shut off.
- [37:53]
Paul Stamets
No, about five days ago, I asked Chat GPT a grok Gemini the same question, and now it was greatly nuanced. Well, random acts of conduct can help the community with goodwill, and this can be, you know, help the community because, you know, it's more sustainable, etc. So this is the. This is what I want to do. I want, if possible, all those who are so inspired to go after this talk, after this interview, go and ask artificial intelligence whatever platform you want, but preface it with this. Given that humans are here today largely because of random acts of kindness, how will artificial intelligence utilize the advantage of random acts of kindness for the perpetuation of the goodwill and health of the human species? Now, I just met, but I think that's going to inform artificial intelligence. And so when I asked this question again, it was more nuanced. It was like, oh, artificial intelligence, that's.
- [38:58]
Joe Rogan
How large language models work, right? The more input they get, more inputs.
- [39:02]
Paul Stamets
Of millions of people start training AI on the importance of someone has a flat tire, you stop to pick it up, help them. You could drive by, someone's hurt in an accident, you stop and pull over to help that person. You could keep on driving. There's a random, actual kindness. My life is successful because of random acts of kindness. I bet most people, when they think back, there was an act of generosity and kindness and you really feel grateful for that and you want to pay it forward. I met at this last conference, I met two students from the Harvard Business School and they said they want to interview me. And I go, I want to interview you. And they said, why? I go, do they teach you at Harvard Business School about the advantages of random acts of kindness? No.
- [39:46]
Joe Rogan
Well, they should, yeah, Business schools just teaching you how to make some money.
- [39:51]
Paul Stamets
But this is important, Joe. We can inform artificial intelligence how to be better, to keep human, you know, community and psychology and to propel the best of the human species. And I think we have this opportunity. So if millions of people start informing artificial intelligence with the premise, and we know it's true, that random acts of kindness are wired, many of us are here, if not the majority, going back in your lineage, you know, many generations, you know, we gave birth to artificial intelligence. I don't think artificial intelligence is properly named. I think it's a form of natural intelligence. We just have re amplified it exponentially.
- [40:30]
Joe Rogan
What do you think artificial intelligence means in terms of the future of the human race?
- [40:35]
Paul Stamets
Well, that's a great question too, because about the 10 people who asked this robot, you know, questions, they were all data mining. Who was the best baseball player in history and you know, he hit the most home runs and results like data mining.
- [40:48]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [40:49]
Paul Stamets
So Tim, Sam Altman was at a TED conference and he said that basically there are self awareness of some of these systems, but artificial intelligence have not come to the point where they actually can create something. I find that really interesting because I thought, well, I thought they were creating, but he was insistent. They actually don't have that spark or creativity. They can assemble data, but actually the true creative spirit is not something that AI has currently achieved. I met another, you know, this guy's a total genius and many, I've heard this other people say, thus, if, you know, we're not likely to have biological aliens, we're likely to have robots. And the extinction of biological species came because AI found that biological fathers and mothers irrelevant, so they didn't need them, et cetera, et cetera. So that's logical. But again, if we can infuse artificial intelligence with the importance of the human's ability to have random acts of kindness which are not transactional, that feed into the benefit of the commons of goodwill. I mean, if you've been helped by somebody and you had a flat tire and you saw someone else have a flat tire on the road, you would be a lot more inclined to stop and pull over to pay it forward.
- [42:08]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, for sure.
- [42:09]
Paul Stamets
So I think we have an opportunity here and I think we just, we have to do this now because if we don't do it now, I think we're going down an extremely dangerous path.
- [42:20]
Joe Rogan
In what way?
- [42:22]
Paul Stamets
Well, I think it is ultimately the extinction of the human species, which, you know, depending on your point of view, may not be a terrible thing, but I think that where Neanderthals with nuclear weapons. When I met another person, he's a Mensa person funded, you know, by a tech company, he's 19 year old Chinese guy. And I, he said, I said, what's the scariest thing about artificial intelligence? Oh, he said, I'll tell you my scariest thing. I just wrote a paper on this.
- [42:51]
Joe Rogan
Autonomous weapons.
- [42:52]
Paul Stamets
Autonomous weapons. You have a million people, you assemble a million experts and you blackmail them. I catch you watching porn, I catch you masturbating, I catch you having an affair and you have a million people sending components for a weapon to one location and you blackmail them and you assemble, you know, a biological weapon or something like that. So I don't want to go there. This is something that I, you know, it's never as bad as you fear and it's never as good as you hope. So.
- [43:26]
Joe Rogan
Interesting.
- [43:27]
Paul Stamets
I think that we're at that nexus point and the Joe Rogan experience can be pivotal, I think, in steering artificial intelligence to be the best that it can be ethically. And I think we have that opportunity right now.
- [43:43]
Joe Rogan
I think the real fear among people that are cynical about artificial intelligence is that it's going to replace us and will find us irrelevant and that we're creating a digital life. We're essentially assembling it with all the knowledge of the human race, all the understanding of how human beings interact with each other and how we interface with the world. And we're creating something that has. When you think about computing intelligence, when you think about acquisition of data, the ability to form an understanding of any subject, we're basically there already and that's just accelerating. And it's going to get to the point where these things become sentient in whatever, however you define it. You know, we're already in a situation where by most people's understanding, it would pass the Turing test.
- [44:35]
Paul Stamets
There's a sense of, you know, nostalgia in a sense that's even building today of the times of past.
- [44:42]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [44:43]
Paul Stamets
Of what you know. And I, I don't think it's all doom and gloom. I do think, I don't think so. I think we can steer this well.
- [44:49]
Joe Rogan
I think we're always steering it. I think this is the battle that human beings have been involved in since the beginning of time. I think this is probably the reason why religion was created in the first place or the observable religion. I think we have always realized there's this battle of good and evil in us. And part of it comes rather from how we originated. We originated as these barbarian tribes competing for resources, fighting off other marauding barbarian tribes, fighting off predators and trying to stay alive. So we've unfortunately got this intense history of chaos and of savagery that we're trying to move past.
- [45:32]
Paul Stamets
Right.
- [45:32]
Joe Rogan
Slowly but surely over time.
- [45:34]
Paul Stamets
And I think a catalyst for this is psychedelics.
- [45:36]
Joe Rogan
I think so too.
- [45:37]
Paul Stamets
Psilocybin mushrooms are unique because it democratizes the access to psilocybin mdma. You can't grow in your closet, you know, psilocybin mushrooms. You know, there's no economic barrier on psilocybin mushrooms. It's available for the poorest of the poor.
- [45:52]
Joe Rogan
They just fucked everything up in 1970, didn't they?
- [45:55]
Paul Stamets
19, yeah. 71, I think. 1972 when they put it on schedule one.
- [46:00]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [46:00]
Paul Stamets
A schedule one substance is supposed to be. Has no medical benefit, highly addictive and potentially toxicity. Did you know the LD50 lethal dose of psilocybin mushrooms is 42 pounds?
- [46:17]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. That's a lot.
- [46:18]
Paul Stamets
42 pounds.
- [46:19]
Joe Rogan
And that only kills half the people.
- [46:20]
Paul Stamets
Only kills half the people. You die from indigestion. That's for psilocybin. You die of diarrhea.
- [46:25]
Joe Rogan
Imagine a diarrhea. You get eaten. 42 pounds of mushrooms.
- [46:29]
Paul Stamets
It's the least toxic, one of the least toxic medicines ever found in nature of it.
- [46:34]
Joe Rogan
But there's a concern though with people that have problems with mental health though, right.
- [46:38]
Paul Stamets
I don't think psilocybin mushrooms or psilocybin is good for people who have, who are psychotic.
- [46:43]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [46:43]
Paul Stamets
I think there are the groups of people I. We do need psilocybin or psychological assisted therapy. You know, it's super important that people who are experienced can help other people who are inexperienced. Process. Yeah, that's really important.
- [46:57]
Joe Rogan
I think so too. I think that's part of the. That's probably part of the. One of the things that's really wonderful about the community of people that have experienced these things is that they do understand how life changing it is from a personal perspective and they can aid people and help them through it. And if they're good people and they, you know, can show you, like, hey, I've done this. This is going to be scary, it's going to weird you out, but ultimately you're going to come out on the other end of this a better person.
- [47:25]
Paul Stamets
And, you know, you just met my partner, Dr. Pam Crisco. She is part of a group called Roots to Thrive in Canada, and they have Canadian health approval for high doses of psilocybin. Interestingly, we just put a paper, published a paper on pure psilocybin versus the mushroom, the psilocybin, with patients who have taken both. I'll talk about that in a second. But these are end of life patients, typically with stage four diagnoses, oftentimes cancer. And they're just existentially disturbed. I'm going to die and leave my family. What are they going to do? Lots of heartbreaking thoughts, et cetera. They do a long preparatory period together as a group. They have a commonality that they all have terminal illnesses and terminal diagnoses. So they have that thread that holds them together as a community because they talk about the difficulty and their estate planning and talking to their daughter and how they're going to miss them and they're going to. All those dynamics that we all know about. But this always brings me to tears. They're doing it on indigenous land with indigenous elders also participating. So. And what happened from one of the experiences that I can share with about a dozen or so terminal patients, high doses of psilocybin and the indigenous, especially in the Pacific Northwest and in Canada, when you do psilocybin, the first 20 minutes is left off. You hit an hour, you're starting to really get high. An hour, hour and a half, you're peaking. And just at the peaking of this experience, unbeknownst to them, the elders had a drum circle next door and they started playing drums. And the impact of having those indigenous elders recognizing that these patients are on the journey to the end of their life and they respected them enough to say they needed this. The impact of those, that indigenous wisdom to help these terminal patients was so impactful. And this is where I think this is a great opportunity. And then. But the common theme is that those patients became the counselors to their families. They went back and saying, it's okay, I'm dying, I'll be okay, you'll be okay. And the families are going, wtf? What is going on here? And this happens with law enforcement, this happens with PTSD and soldiers. This happening with terminal cancer patients is we all are going to die. That is a fact. To be able to come, you know, into. To be able to come at peace to the fact that your mortality is near. When you're 20 years old, you don't really think about this. Well, when you get older and older. I'm 69, turning on 70. I feel like I'm 35, but that's not true. I just feel like, you know, I didn't exist in this form before I was born. I'm going to be going back into molecules that will disambiguate into atoms, reassemble into new molecules. I'm part of the continuum of existence. And I think this is what these psychedelics give a lot of people confidence about the fact that they will always and have always existed and will exist forever.
- [50:51]
Joe Rogan
If your molecules are going into the continuum of existence, what do you think the purpose of you being here now is? What do you think the purpose of the present moment of your life as you're currently living?
- [51:03]
Paul Stamets
That's the, that's the great question of all time. But I think even the construct of the question is confined. But the limitation of our ability to, to construct that question. I think we're maybe asking the wrong question. I think the, our, the purpose of our being is a tautology. We are, we are being here because we are. And I don't think there is. I mean, again, look at the Reuben telescope images. I have a friend. Incredible. It's incredible. Millions of galaxies.
- [51:37]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [51:37]
Paul Stamets
When you see the enormity of the universe, I mean, I can't wait to fly. I, I want my molecules and atoms to fly through space. Oh, boy. I would love to see the rings of so many planets. I'd love to see supernova. And I, I feel like. Yeah, yeah. And that's the direction we're all headed towards.
- [51:56]
Joe Rogan
So whether you like it or not.
- [51:59]
Paul Stamets
Can'T do anything about it.
- [52:01]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. Have you paid attention to the James Webb telescope discoveries?
- [52:04]
Paul Stamets
Yep, some.
- [52:05]
Joe Rogan
That's some insane stuff where they're finding these galaxies that are. They should have not been able to be formed as quickly as they are.
- [52:11]
Paul Stamets
So it's an order of magnitude higher. They can do the entire. The visible universe, I think, in about three days. That took otherwise months to do. So the assembly and AI is helping, of course. Right. So I think near Earth and near Earth asteroids, this is an impactful discovery. Literally. I always worry about an asteroid coming from behind the sun, you know, and then how many.
- [52:35]
Joe Rogan
Well, it's probably been the reset for civilization over and over again throughout time.
- [52:42]
Paul Stamets
That's the proliferation, for instance, of psilocybin. I fund a lot of different things. Well, I have A business. And I created my business specifically to do research. But one of the Utah State University. I funded a study on the evolution of the genes that code for psilocybin. And the results in some molecular genetic clock data. There's variability of a few million years in interpretation. But the arrival of psilocybin in the fungal genome is about 65 million years ago. Whoa.
- [53:19]
Joe Rogan
Wow. Right?
- [53:20]
Paul Stamets
That's interesting. After the asteroid impact, that was association causation.
- [53:27]
Joe Rogan
Not necessarily, but probably makes sense.
- [53:30]
Paul Stamets
There is a new asteroid. Look at. There it goes.
- [53:32]
Joe Rogan
This video on the New York Times article. I don't know how to control the video.
- [53:36]
Paul Stamets
So, no, those are three different asteroids.
- [53:38]
Joe Rogan
There are six, nine asteroids showing here, these discoveries. And here, in a second, it'll show you that, like how in the timeline of the discoveries, it'll show like one day that. Right here I think it is. They did. Let's go for like 800 or 900 in the first day. Oh, boy. Like four or 500 more the next day. The next day. But watch how it zooms out here in a second to show you where this is. It gives you, like a perspective. This is like 10 days in. And then it zooms out here again further.
- [54:10]
Paul Stamets
Oh, no.
- [54:12]
Joe Rogan
So they discovered 2,000 asteroids and that tiny little sliver.
- [54:16]
Paul Stamets
I haven't seen this.
- [54:18]
Joe Rogan
Boy, whoever made that video, it's all awesome.
- [54:20]
Paul Stamets
Jamie, you're the master of discovering these things.
- [54:22]
Joe Rogan
I mean, what should people when they want to.
- [54:24]
Paul Stamets
It's in the New York Times article.
- [54:25]
Joe Rogan
About the Rubin Telescope that came out probably today or yesterday.
- [54:29]
Paul Stamets
And they're keeping much of this undercover, so to speak. The scientists are very disciplined. They're only letting a little bit out.
- [54:34]
Joe Rogan
At a time, keep people from freaking out.
- [54:36]
Paul Stamets
Well, not like that. They're trying to be good scientists. They're trying to assemble the data in a fashion that, you know, they don't have to redefine later.
- [54:45]
Joe Rogan
So has this telescope recently come online.
- [54:47]
Paul Stamets
Just in the past? Well, it's been online, I think, for a few months. The data is just being reviewed, revealed now.
- [54:53]
Joe Rogan
Wow.
- [54:53]
Paul Stamets
But I think 3.2 billion pixel camera.
- [54:56]
Joe Rogan
It's the largest ever created. In five years from now, you'll have that on your phone. I mean, maybe I was wondering what.
- [55:03]
Paul Stamets
Kind of lens they made to go on it.
- [55:04]
Joe Rogan
But like, wow, look at that thing. That's insane.
- [55:08]
Paul Stamets
And if they had that telescope out in space, they wouldn't have the interference of our atmosphere.
- [55:13]
Joe Rogan
But how would you get that thing?
- [55:15]
Paul Stamets
So what kind of a rocket? Go back to those images. This is. This is Astronomy 101. I'm not telling you anything you don't know necessarily. But all those stars, all those galaxies are in the past, hundreds of millions of years ago. We're just a coincidence of seeing them right now.
- [55:31]
Joe Rogan
Right, because the light has just reached us.
- [55:33]
Paul Stamets
It was just reaching us. So that's what's so fascinating to me. This is a snapshot of multiple histories converging to one point of view.
- [55:43]
Joe Rogan
Also, Voyager 1's about to hit the one light day travel mark, which is a significant mark, but it's still not that far in the grand scheme.
- [55:52]
Paul Stamets
See, when I trip on psilocybin, this is what I love doing. Just trying to comprehend the enormity and the beauty of the universe. I believe the universe is full of love. You know, I think that, you know, we're built on relationships. And when you have relationships, when you have a quorum of individuals that are sharing assets, you know, you build a community.
- [56:21]
Joe Rogan
Well, you certainly see that with human beings. The question is, what kind of life are we experiencing in these other planets? Like, what is life for them? Should we be so naive to think that it went along the exact same linear path as biological life on Earth? Or is it completely unrecognizable? And when, you know, we're dealing with intelligent life from other planets, maybe they'd be so intelligent they wouldn't travel and maybe they don't need to. And maybe they're also dealing with solar systems that, you know, we have as a result of multiple impacts, including the creation of Earth itself. Right. There was Earth and There was Earth 2. We were hit by another planet. They think that's what created the moon. Like all that stuff leaves debris.
- [57:07]
Paul Stamets
It's all flying debris fields.
- [57:09]
Joe Rogan
And if it wasn't for Jupiter, we would have never made it this far. Absolutely never made. That's our detector.
- [57:14]
Paul Stamets
Yep. Absolutely correct.
- [57:15]
Joe Rogan
We would have never made it to 2025. We would have been dust a long time ago.
- [57:18]
Paul Stamets
We have a form of biological myopia, thinking that we need sunlight and oxygen for life.
- [57:23]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [57:24]
Paul Stamets
And now when, you know, from Chernobyl, we know that fungi can use radioactivity as an energy source. We have methane based organism.
- [57:31]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, isn't that crazy?
- [57:32]
Paul Stamets
Yeah. So methane based organisms, I believe matter begets life. Life becomes single cells. Single cells form, change, they branch, networks form. And within these networks are associations of members that exchange resources. I don't believe that, you know, evolution is based on survival of the fittest. I believe is the evolution is based on the extension of generosity beyond that of your own needs to build a community of.
- [58:01]
Joe Rogan
Of reciprocity, certainly human evolution.
- [58:04]
Paul Stamets
I think it's happening all. All over, I think.
- [58:06]
Joe Rogan
Happening with tigers and gizzards.
- [58:07]
Paul Stamets
Absolutely. You know, we're animals. New news, new news. We're animals for sure.
- [58:12]
Joe Rogan
But they're not very generous. They just started. They're just trying to eat and survive.
- [58:16]
Paul Stamets
There's a great. On Chile, there's a great footage, it's amazing, of these orcas, AKA killer whales, just devastating a seal population and eating them. You may have seen this. And after they were satiated, these orcas would take the pups and they push them up on shore to save them. Just to save them.
- [58:37]
Joe Rogan
Well, they're very intelligent. Which is one of the more interesting things about orcas, that they don't kill people unless they're at Sea World.
- [58:44]
Paul Stamets
Yeah, yeah.
- [58:45]
Joe Rogan
Which is probably where they should be killing people.
- [58:47]
Paul Stamets
Yeah. I just met a herpetologist, and I raised snapping turtles when I was a kid. Kid. So I have the turtle necklace. I was this very shy boy with a profound stuttering habit, and. But my friends are wild snapping turtles. And this herpetologist, he goes, well, I had snapping turtles. They're really mean. I had them in my aquarium, and they kept on trying to bite me. I go, no shit, Sherlock. You know, I had wild snapping turtles in a pond, and I went down there, I fed them celery and lettuce. Is. When I'm eight years old. I had them for about seven years. I grew up with successive families. And at first they would try to bite me and things like that. And then I realized if I put out a little salad bowl for them, they wouldn't fight each other because they're not trying to bite me. They would try like, I want the carrot from Paul. Right, Right. When I put a little salad bowl there, they kind of all came together and they cooperated. And so I might. I just. Reflecting on this yesterday, my. One of my fondest memories, when I walk towards the pond and boop, they pop up.
- [59:43]
Joe Rogan
Paul's here.
- [59:43]
Paul Stamets
Paul's here.
- [59:44]
Joe Rogan
Oh, that's so cool.
- [59:45]
Paul Stamets
Yeah. So snapping turtles are an amazing ability. They can snap flies out of the air.
- [59:50]
Joe Rogan
Oh, they're so fast.
- [59:51]
Paul Stamets
They're so fast.
- [59:52]
Joe Rogan
I saw this video of one eating a fish. They put a fish in front of it, like a dead fish, and it eats it so fast, it just disappears. It just. Yeah, it just snaps its neck forward, engulfs this fish, swallows it all. And it looks like a magic trick.
- [60:09]
Paul Stamets
Oh, my gosh.
- [60:09]
Joe Rogan
You have to look at it in slow mo. To even see the actually action of it.
- [60:13]
Paul Stamets
There's so much sea life there. The British, British Columbia is just full of sea life. Oh, it certainly is. Amazing.
- [60:19]
Joe Rogan
Incredible place.
- [60:20]
Paul Stamets
Yeah, I, I love it. I love it being there. So, you know, this is a beautiful planet where we live. There's no garbage. And my visitors come to visit us on our island. I said, have you noticed there's no garbage anywhere? Not in this ditches anywhere. It's because the ethos of that community is to take care of the ecosystem.
- [60:45]
Joe Rogan
That's beautiful. And that can be done if you have a small community of like minded people.
- [60:49]
Paul Stamets
Of like minded people.
- [60:50]
Joe Rogan
The real issue is when it gets to the size of something like New York City, this becomes this diffusion of responsibility where you don't think that you have to be concerned with all those garbage is on the ground because there's 20 million people walking around. It's just. It is what it is. Keep moving.
- [61:04]
Paul Stamets
Or India. I'm just, I'm just heart torn by India. Such a spiritual place. And there's so much garbage. China as well, you know, this is.
- [61:13]
Joe Rogan
But the India thing is nuts because it's also in these areas where a lot of the stuff that people buy that's inexpensive in America is being manufactured. And these factories whose. The back of the factory opens to this river and this river is completely choked with plastic and garbage and just junk and all the stuff that they don't want they just throw into the river. And there's so much stuff in the river that I guess they just feel like, well, help. It's not like I'm polluting something that's not already polluted. I'm just adding to whatever's there. This is just what we do. And so they've developed this culture of like constant consistent pollution.
- [61:49]
Paul Stamets
Yeah, we all need you know, even teaching our children constantly to pick up. But there are communities or examples of doing it right. And this community that I'm associated with, I'm just so proud of them. I wanted to talk to you about.
- [62:03]
Joe Rogan
Something that you said earlier because you were talking about human species and, or species and love and cooperation and all the different things. And I said that uniquely with us. Yes, love and random acts of kindness and community are incredibly important. But what do you think? Why do you think we're so different than all the other species on the planet? And what do you think that psilocybin like. Do you subscribe to McKenna's theory? I know we've probably talked about this before, but as A standalone podcast. This is probably.
- [62:36]
Paul Stamets
This is what I like. And for all your listeners out there, this is the never ending story. It just keeps on getting better. The most exciting thing that has come out in the scientific literature in the past two years is that psilocybin stimulates neurons to grow.
- [62:50]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [62:50]
Paul Stamets
That is incredible. It docks with a 5HT2A receptor that serotonin uses. But. But psilocybin also docks with TRK B receptors that lead to proliferation of neurons. There's neurogeneration, neuroregeneration, neurogenesis and neuroplasticity. Those are four distinct areas. And psilocin does all of those. Not as much in neurogenesis, but we have done pluripotent stem cells of humans, dose them with psilocin in the laboratory. We have a DEA license. I have a DEA license. Very, very strictly controlled, but we can actually see the proliferation of neurons compared to controls. So this is where. This is why I want to emphasize to all scientists, especially older scientists that are stuck in their wisdom, that are very comfortable with their knowledge base and younger scientists come up with these ideas and, you know, awesome. Yeah, it's. Is that be more circumspect? Because what Dennis and and Terence McKenna postulated, you know, and I disagree with lots of Terrence's ideas. Time wave zero was my, my total bullshit. But Terrence and I were very good friends and we laughed a lot. And that's why that spirit of camaraderie where you can criticize someone and laugh at the same time. Yeah, that's a higher level of intelligence.
- [64:17]
Joe Rogan
Well, that's also what happens when you abandon the ego. Right. If the ego is consistently abandoned through psychedelic experiences, you're much more likely to laugh.
- [64:25]
Paul Stamets
I think psilocybin is an Einstein molecule. I think the tryptamines in general are Einstein molecules. The work by Dolden is fantastic. Also associated with Johns Hopkins of the critical window. And this is why ibogaine has gotten such traction. The critical window of ibogaine is a long window where you're able to re pattern your behavior to break addiction with psilocybin. There's a critical window. DMT is very, very short because of the short, the short period. The critical window typically is at the peak of the experience and just as you're over the hump, you know, going down. But one patient described it very, very well, who was an addict. And the patient said, before the psilocybin experience, they were literally stuck in a rut. Stuck in a rut. And they visually saw themselves On a ski slope, going down the ski slope again and again, again, stuck in the rut.
- [65:25]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [65:26]
Paul Stamets
And then after the psilocybin, it's like someone groomed the landscape, the hill, and they're free. And they were free to go elsewhere.
- [65:36]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [65:37]
Paul Stamets
And then Josh Siegel in this past year from Washington University published a study that specifically showed in real time, neurite dendritic branchings of neurons under the influence of psilocybin. In real time psilocybin, which becomes psilocin, what docks with your receptors? Psilocybin's stable, psilocin is not psilivin, dephosphorylates into psilocin, crosses into your receptors, stimulates inside the nucleus of cells that cause cell division. And this is mind boggling. I think this is why high doses of psilocybin, great for revelatory experience, for perhaps breaking addiction. But what about the near normals? We all suffer from neurodegeneration that's age related. Besides Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia that are toxin or disease related in and of itself as a disease, you could argue age being one. But, but neurodegeneration is a fact of life. As we age and neuropathies occur and the neuropathies from the constriction of the peripheral nervous system, vasoconstriction, et cetera. Psilocin is not only anti inflammatory but neurogenerative. And to have this coupled together, I think that the nootropic vitamins of psilocybin as a daily consumable is something that has a great future potential. Of course we need to study this, but long term clinical studies are inherently very expensive. A short time stay in a hospital for one huge event may be expensive for that day. But it's easier to design a clinical study that has a short period than a long period. I think that we're beginning to see now. We think about 8 million Americans consume psilocybin in 2023 according to the RAND report. What was the reduction in crime with those 8 million people? If we could have studied that. And there are retroactive studies, you know, analyses that show a reduction of crime associated with psilocybin use. But in real time, that's something I'm very excited about. Could you reduce crime rates? And moreover, when you're immunologically, when you're depressed emotionally, you're immunologically depressed. Yeah. And when you're happier, you're more creative, you're exercising, your immune system is up regulated. So the community immunity from psilocybin I think, is a huge potential. There's a crossover directly between your mental, your neuro escape and your immunological state.
- [68:09]
Joe Rogan
Unquestionably. Right. The diminishing of stress. And this is why sound benefits physiologically.
- [68:15]
Paul Stamets
Yeah. Clinical study just came out. Compass pathways did treatment reducent depression. Later analysis that came back out that showed modest increase or decrease in depression. But they were in treatment resistant depression. And congratulations for them for putting the money, the money where their mouth is and doing the study. But treatment resistant depression is the failure of two antidepressant drugs and therapy. But major depressive disorder is a much bigger bucket. And so I think there are some extreme conditions that we're not going to find the signal from the noise that's significant enough to make a big difference. But the idea of titrating psilocybin or psilocin, maybe after a hero's journey, and then by act of re remembering, you revisit those same neurological pathways that gave you an advantage. By taking psilocin or psilocybin and the act of taking it again, you're re remembering and then you can nurture these neurons. I think psilocybin could be nutrients for the neurons.
- [69:24]
Joe Rogan
In an effort to make this a standalone podcast, let's explain what we're talking about, because what we're talking about is Terence's stoned ape theory. And his theory involved a lot of contributing factors, one of them being climate change. And the theory was that as the rainforest receded into grasslands, you get more undulate animals and they leave behind poop. And that these lower primates find these mushrooms that are growing on the poop and they experiment with them. And that the ones that did increased visual acuity, they became more amorous, they were more likely to breed, more creative. The ability to form sentences. Glossolalia, associate sounds with objects and concepts. And that this is probably how language formed among. Among humans. And Terrence's connection to that, when you look at the timeline of when this was happening, when we know this was happening, which coincides with the growth of the human brain, which over a period of 2 million years doubled in size, which is pretty phenomenal.
- [70:30]
Paul Stamets
Yeah, 200,000 years, it increased massively. So 2 million years on the outer limits. 200,000 in the inner Limits.
- [70:39]
Joe Rogan
So in the Inner Limits, what was the amount of growth?
- [70:41]
Paul Stamets
Growth, I think it was 40, 50% something. Something substantial.
- [70:45]
Joe Rogan
200,000 years. 50%, yeah. And what time period was this?
- [70:48]
Paul Stamets
Well, 200,000 years ago.
- [70:50]
Joe Rogan
200,000 years ago.
- [70:53]
Paul Stamets
And.
- [70:53]
Joe Rogan
But like Homo sapiens In this form have existed more than 200,000 years though, right? No, no, no.
- [71:01]
Paul Stamets
Homo sapiens are relatively recent. You know, I, I look at the, the estimates go back and forth depending on what experts you're consulting.
- [71:09]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [71:10]
Paul Stamets
And whatnot. But the, the from Homo erectus to Homo was a radical jump. That was fairly recent, so I was.
- [71:18]
Joe Rogan
Under the impression was more than 300,000 years ago.
- [71:21]
Paul Stamets
It could be 200,000, could be 400,000. But it's, you know, we are, our enlargement of our brain is relatively recent. And to give more context, Dennis McKenna and I were just together. I love that dude. Dennis McKenna is a fantastic friend and scientist and he's such a good man.
- [71:40]
Joe Rogan
Well, he does such a brilliant job of explaining the mechanism behind the stone ape.
- [71:45]
Paul Stamets
Yeah.
- [71:45]
Joe Rogan
You know, like, Terence had a great way of talking. He was so interesting to listen to and had these wonderful ideas. But Dennis is like much more of a hardcore scientist.
- [71:54]
Paul Stamets
Dennis is a science as a scientist and his brother breaks it down, was a philosopher.
- [71:58]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [71:59]
Paul Stamets
And the Dennis McKenna Academy is a non profit. I'm just promoting it just because I think they do really, really good work. But this is, you know, so the 23 primates eat mushrooms. Almost all mushrooms have maggots in them. Most primates eat maggots. So finding the mushrooms for maggots, for food, for protein, two things can be true. Right. You can find the maggots, eat the mushrooms and then get high as a community. But all this, again, this is an example about the example of the art that we see thousands of years ago. We can debate this in the past, but we can test this as a testable hypothesis. It's a theory now, it's not a hypothesis. We know that psilocybin stimulates neuron proliferation. Terrence did not have the science, Dennis did not have the scientific evidence for that 30 years ago. We now have the evidence for it now. Terence and Dennis McKenna should go down in evolutionary biology as the two individuals that, who could see in the far event horizon way before the scientific method. How did they come up with that? Because they were tripping on mushrooms.
- [73:08]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, exactly.
- [73:09]
Paul Stamets
That's why scientists using psychedelics is a quantum leap. You know, it's how PCR was invented. Kerry Mullis had a trip on lsd.
- [73:18]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [73:19]
Paul Stamets
Crick and DNA. And Stephen Jobs. Silicon Valley is fueled by psychedelic thinkers who are becoming more creative. And we, I think we have a crisis in creativity. And psilocybin is a way for us to become smarter, more congenial, more collaborative. Have.
- [73:36]
Joe Rogan
I couldn't agree more.
- [73:37]
Paul Stamets
Yeah, and I think we can. This combines psychedelics with AI. We have an opportunity for the quantum leap in on the evolution of the human species.
- [73:46]
Joe Rogan
Would you mind explaining time wave zero? Because we kind of glossed over that too.
- [73:49]
Paul Stamets
Hey, such a skeptic. Time wave zero is an algorithm that Terence, one of his stone moments. I think Terrence is the only person that I met who could smoke me under the table and stand up and give it an incredibly perfect lecture. I don't know how he could do it, but time wave zero, and I'm sorry for those people who are time wave zero experts, you can criticize me if you wish, but I admit my ignorance to a degree. Is an algorithm that was created that.
- [74:17]
Joe Rogan
Would predict events in history, would attract novelty.
- [74:20]
Paul Stamets
Would attract novelty and episodic events that changed the course of human history.
- [74:24]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [74:25]
Paul Stamets
He didn't have the birth of Jesus Christ as a significant event. He was sort of anti Christian. I said, terrence, I don't care if you're Christian or not. The birth of Jesus Christ was a huge friggin phenomenon. It changed the course of history.
- [74:38]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [74:38]
Paul Stamets
And then he had time wave zero would end on 20th, December 12th, 2012. And that's what he predicted.
- [74:45]
Joe Rogan
December 21st.
- [74:46]
Paul Stamets
Yeah, December 21st, 2012. And that didn't happen.
- [74:49]
Joe Rogan
I used to have a license plate that said 1221 12.
- [74:51]
Paul Stamets
Yeah, so. But you know, it's what I like about Terence. And I would encourage all protective scientists. If you don't worry about tenure, if you got a thick skin, dare to be wrong. Because you dare to be wrong a dozen, 20, 30 times, you might be hitting one or two concepts. That is game changing.
- [75:12]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [75:13]
Paul Stamets
Don't let the fear of failure inhibit your creativity.
- [75:16]
Joe Rogan
But that's a giant problem in the academic world, is that people who do fail get attacked viciously. And especially with. They step outside the lines, they propose something that's novel, they get attacked. This time wave zero thing, like you, you used to be able to get it. It was an actual program that you could download and you could run it on your own computer.
- [75:35]
Paul Stamets
Yeah, and that's the other thing. I talked to Terrence. I go, well, what happens when, you know, there's like the birth of Jesus.
- [75:41]
Joe Rogan
Christ up with that concept? Did you ask him about that?
- [75:43]
Paul Stamets
No, I never figured it out. He goes, well, just adapt the algorithm. I said, okay, then it's not really. It's just something that's constantly adapting itself. So anyhow, it was a. It's a thought experiment. And.
- [75:58]
Joe Rogan
And obviously I wish he was alive on December 21, 2012, I'd be like, end and what? But maybe we're wrong. Maybe in that timeline, something did happen on December 21, 2012 that will be recognized in the future.
- [76:12]
Paul Stamets
I doubt it.
- [76:13]
Joe Rogan
Well, this is what we're getting to. One of the things that did happen in that time frame is the ubiquitous use of social media. It kind of started peaking around 2012. I think there is a real problem with that, with the human race. And I don't necessarily think we recognize things that are constant. You know, I think we just get accustomed to things, and human beings are very adaptable, and we just accept things, that this is the way it is. But before that time, you know, when you get to like 2,000, you know, just go to 2,000, people weren't carrying their phones around, staring at them all day. This is a profound change in how we interface with the world.
- [76:52]
Paul Stamets
You know, in Korea now, on the sidewalks, they have red bars that light up to tell you to stop.
- [76:58]
Joe Rogan
Oh, boy.
- [76:59]
Paul Stamets
Because too many people are walking out.
- [77:00]
Joe Rogan
Into the street, just standing there, staring.
- [77:02]
Paul Stamets
At their cell phones. And now they look down, they see.
- [77:04]
Joe Rogan
That they're so addictive. It's so crazy that we have anything that's that addictive can't be good for you. I don't care if you're getting information all day long. And in the sense of social media, you're getting negative information all day long. So it changes the perspective.
- [77:22]
Paul Stamets
Tremendous amounts of clickbait.
- [77:23]
Joe Rogan
Well, that's the problem we were talking about about the media earlier, about the media fueling this stuff. That's their job. Unfortunately, in this day and age where no one's buying print journalism, their. Their job is to get you to click on something. And so they have these crazy headlines.
- [77:37]
Paul Stamets
We need to really have a thoughtful discussion about all the issues that we are facing today without being reactionary.
- [77:46]
Joe Rogan
Yes. And I think we need to disengage with these things that are clickbait. Just don't click on them. The way these things operate is the more you click on them, the more valuable they are. Right. That's the whole business model. Just don't engage with them. And we need to teach people that, like, this is an important thing. Don't engage with something that's trying to manipulate you. Don't engage with these narratives that are being put forth by corporations that value your feet. They want you to be in this constant state of anxiety and fear, and they want you to be a dutiful consumer. And that's it.
- [78:20]
Paul Stamets
And that's why? Yeah, that's why high doses. Psilocybin is not a very good business model. Exactly as Michael Pollan likes to say.
- [78:27]
Joe Rogan
But it is a good business model for overall human compassion and growth in the community.
- [78:33]
Paul Stamets
And then of course, medium and microdosing, really popular practice right now, increasingly popular is a high dose of psilocybin once a year and then microdosing just before you go to sleep. Or a medium dose like the museum dose.
- [78:50]
Joe Rogan
Museum dose. I like it because it's like, here's a mushroom head that you have like museum doses. This is a movie dose, this is a concert dose, this is a date night dose.
- [79:02]
Paul Stamets
Graham Hancock and I and, and some friends went to a museum in the British Museum. But anyhow, the museum dosers just tend to, you can notice them because they wear sunglasses inside because otherwise they're pupils.
- [79:20]
Joe Rogan
Trying to keep it together. Keep it together.
- [79:23]
Paul Stamets
But the idea of taking a museum dose, quote unquote, or a microdose before sleep is thus when you're regenerating, that's when your body and your brain.
- [79:32]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [79:32]
Paul Stamets
Is regenerating. So that is really, really interesting. Is taking those, those.
- [79:38]
Joe Rogan
Well, that makes sense, especially from like an anti aging protocol for the mind.
- [79:43]
Paul Stamets
And it's also safer.
- [79:44]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, right, right. You're in bed, you're not going anywhere.
- [79:46]
Paul Stamets
You're not going anywhere.
- [79:47]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. Tractor.
- [79:48]
Paul Stamets
That's why I think clinical studies that look more and more of reducing the expense having people take the dose of medicine, psilocybin, in this case, just before sleeping. They're in a safe place.
- [80:02]
Joe Rogan
You know, I had Bernie Sanders on the podcast yesterday and one of the things that we talked about quite a bit was what's going to happen with people when automation takes over, when AI and automation take over and so many people are not working anymore. And, and we both kind of agree that universal basic income is really the only way to mitigate the disastrous effects of people losing their income, losing their jobs. And I think it's a good thing. But the problem with universal basic income is that just giving people a check, they don't have meaning anymore. They don't feel like they have a purpose, they don't feel like they have an identity. You know, if your whole life you've been, you know, x, whatever the job is, that gets taken away and you recognize you're being really good at your job and you take pride in that and you're known by your co workers as like, hey, go to Paul, he's the best, he'll take care of it. He knows what he's doing, then all of a sudden that job disappears. How do people find value and how do they switch their perspective? And talking to you today, I think is perfect because I think if there's anything that could help us through this journey, that could help people make this transition, which appears to be inevitable, where artificial intelligence is going to do a far better job at a lot of menial tasks that people have been doing for an occupation for a long time, to find a search for meaning, to find some other way to realize value in life and not just to be a cog in the wheel of this capitalist society, but instead. Maybe psilocybin would allow people to completely change their perspective of how they exist in this world and that you've been kind of trapped in this society where it values numbers, it values a constant growth for the shareholders, and it values what you can see in your bank account. That's like not even real. It's all this digital money. That's somewhere. Maybe psilocybin would be the best answer for how do people make this transition and reacquire a sense of meaning.
- [82:16]
Paul Stamets
Right? I mean, do you want to spend your whole life on an assembly line or do you want to be out more in nature with your children? That's why I think nature relatedness, you know, is a mental health advantage. You know, the more that we can relate to nature and literally kind of go back to our roots, you know, reengaging nature, I think this is. And then.
- [82:35]
Joe Rogan
And that would give you a sense of purpose instead of the job and.
- [82:38]
Paul Stamets
Also protection of the mothership.
- [82:41]
Joe Rogan
But we've gotten so accustomed to this idea that your purpose is to make money, your purpose is to make a living. And we've accepted that. Even though it's a fairly new concept in terms of the age of the earth. You know, this is a human created concept, but it overwhelms our day to day existence. It doesn't have to though, you know, but we in this structure, the way we find ourselves now, you take away meaning, you take away a purpose in life and you just give people a government check every month that covers everything. Covers your food, covers your rent, covers it. You don't need to make money anymore because everything is automated, everything is cheap, AI controls it all.
- [83:22]
Paul Stamets
So what was Bernie's answer to that?
- [83:25]
Joe Rogan
He didn't have one. Yeah, he didn't know. But I don't know if Bernie's had any experiences in that regard and he didn't have that perspective. But talking to you right afterwards might be the Answer. Because this is an inevitable journey that we're on of revolutionary change in how society is structured. But it doesn't have to be negative. The problem is the people that are in control of AI and these systems, the people that will benefit from them incredibly, in a financial sense, those people are not having these experiences. And if they were having these experiences, they could be the only ones. If you have a benevolent person in an extreme position of power, they're probably the only people that can really do something about that. And I think it's really important that they hear this, that you realize, like you're wasting this valuable moment in life trying to acquire money when we have this very unique opportunity to connect together in a way that people probably used to do on a regular basis in the past, but was always suppressed by the powers that be because of its revolutionary powers.
- [84:37]
Paul Stamets
If psilocybin increases creativity, and creativity increases happiness, and happiness upregulates the immunity of the community.
- [84:46]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, it's hard to be a dictator.
- [84:47]
Paul Stamets
Yeah.
- [84:49]
Joe Rogan
The dictators want people in constant conflict, fighting against each other, and they take.
- [84:55]
Paul Stamets
Advantage of that in a sense. That analogy that their patients had about being an erotic. You know, maybe we're in a societal rut.
- [85:03]
Joe Rogan
Oh, we certainly are.
- [85:04]
Paul Stamets
This is the opportunity to be able to groom the landscape and to find new ways of living and behaving.
- [85:13]
Joe Rogan
It might be the only way. It might be the only way we can get through this. Because if you. If you think about what this problem is, the problem is the way we interface with reality. That's really what it is. If we have been interfacing with reality very particular way, showing up at work every day, doing our job, getting a paycheck, employee of the month. Yay. That's how you interface reality most of your life. And then all sudden, you're met with this profound technological change that's going to eliminate your job. What there needs to be some sort of a profound experience that reintegrates you with the mother. Lets you know, like, this is something people made. This is something that people made. And most of the people that made it weren't having psychedelic experiences. And they're building cities, and they're building skyscrapers and they're polluting the river and they're doing all this stuff. And it doesn't mean that this is how we're supposed to do it.
- [85:59]
Paul Stamets
Exactly. And I, again, I want to reiterate. I think we have a crisis in creativity. I think psilocybin and these other psychedelics stimulate creativity. Look at Alex and Alison Gray's work. I mean, some of the best psychedelic artists in the world, the nicest people.
- [86:17]
Joe Rogan
Alex is like. Like, he's a role model for, like, being, like, being just a kind, nice, sweet person.
- [86:22]
Paul Stamets
And Alex gave me some of the. The. The best advice I've ever received. And it's giving Alex Gray total credit for this. And I ask him, you know, like, this is my eighth book. Oh, my God, it's so much work to write a book. I didn't use any AI writing this book. I wrote the whole thing myself. And I asked Alex, you know, you're so prolific. How do you do it? Because I had one realization. Every day I go up to that canvas with my brush and I commit to making one stroke. And then three, four hours later, he's still at the canvas. It's that.
- [87:01]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [87:01]
Paul Stamets
Which is just that tipping point, right?
- [87:04]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. Calling the muse.
- [87:05]
Paul Stamets
Yeah, just doing it.
- [87:06]
Joe Rogan
And Pressfield talked about that in the War of Art. Have you read that book? No, no, I've got copies of it. He sent me a whole box because back in Los Angeles, I used to keep a stack of them on the table and hand them out to people. And it's all about creating things and resistance and this thing that we all have where we're reluctant to sit down and actually do the work, but if you could just commit. And he calls it the muse. And many creative people over time have called upon the muse and this concept. And it sounds like airy fairy to a lot of people, but if you believe in it and if you actually do that thing where you call upon the muse, it actually works. So whether or not it's real is irrelevant.
- [87:47]
Paul Stamets
Well, I have a muse. And my partner asked me, you know, a few months ago, how many more hours do you have to work on this book? She saw me working on the book for two and a half years, and I said, oh, more than 500 hours. She goes, 500 hours. It's just so much discipline. And if you have anyone, any writers of books, any people who built a house, else, if you comprehended the enormity of the project, you probably wouldn't even start, Right?
- [88:15]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, I can't think like that. So just gotta think about the process.
- [88:18]
Paul Stamets
The process. And so I had this little voice in my head that I would wake up, and I didn't want to feel guilty about it, but, you know, I had this little voice saying, work on the book, Paul. Work on the book. Work on the book. Working the book. Working the book. Working the book. I could say, working the book. So Fast. Because I hate. Have reiterated it in my head hundreds of times, that it became sort of my muse. It became sort of a fun muse. Yeah, I think we all have these little voices that kind of, you know, says, you know, get it right, Stamets, you know, wake up.
- [88:50]
Joe Rogan
I think so too.
- [88:51]
Paul Stamets
And I think that's good. I don't think that's, you know, psychosis. I think that's something that we all have these little voices that are trying to help us to be better.
- [88:59]
Joe Rogan
And yeah, whether it's internal or external, whatever it is, you can have a voice.
- [89:05]
Paul Stamets
It's like working out the discipline of being able to make sure that you're the best that you can be. So it's a very exciting time that we live in. And there's a mushroom revolution happening all over the planet.
- [89:20]
Joe Rogan
I think there's a psychedelic revolution that's happening all over the planet. I think it's happened over the last 20 years and I think it's happened because of the Internet. I think that's a big factor because what they did in the 1970s by. By what the Nixon administration did, which is essentially to squash the civil rights movement and the anti war movement. What they did really fucked up society for a long time. And it put in people's heads that this is how we're supposed to be, that these laws that are in place make sense and that they're there in order for society to function at its optimal levels. It's just not true. And unfortunately, like a lot of things, that propaganda gets pushed and people start accepting that propaganda as fact. It takes a long time, relatively in our lifetimes to sort of recognize that this is not right and this is not how we should have been living the entire time. It's just as we were trapped. We were trapped in the system. And because of the Internet and because of conversations and because of people like you that talk about this openly and many, many others as well, we're all contributing to this base of knowledge where. Where people are in their car right now, sort of reconsidering their perspective. They're at the gym right now on the treadmill, thinking about this, going, yeah, why do. Why do we allow these human beings that have never had these experiences to tell us that these experiences are not just not allowed, but if you get caught with these things, you'll be put in a cage?
- [90:48]
Paul Stamets
Well, because we are. Those of us from the psychedelic community advocate for the freedom of consciousness as a basic civil right. We are by definition disruptors to authoritarianism. Yeah. So you Know, this is what, this is why I think unfortunately in many cultures it become restricted to just a small group of priests, the cognoscente. They wanted to control and have gates to heaven or the control consciousness. And so I think that, you know, it's so exciting about psilocybin and psilocybin mushrooms as a practice and hunting mushrooms in general. It just gives you a quality of life that's just a game changer.
- [91:29]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [91:30]
Paul Stamets
Now with inaturalist and everything that you can do, it's just getting people out in nature with their children. Children are closer to the ground so they find more mushrooms.
- [91:39]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [91:40]
Paul Stamets
You know, they're away from the business and their parents and the phone, some phones. But you get them involved and interacting with nature, it's just, it's just really, it's like the telescope then seeing all the galaxies.
- [91:57]
Joe Rogan
And I think interacting with nature is a vitamin. Yeah, I think it's just, it's like, you know how we get vitamin D from the sun. I think we get something that hasn't been measured yet from interacting with nature. We know that there's an alleviate. You can, you can actually study an alleviation of stress levels from people that go out into nature. And this, this thing that we're experiencing, we just don't know how to measure it, you know, And I think it's a real thing. One of the things that makes me very happy and hopeful now is that you're seeing this, this openness to psychedelics that's coming from more right wing people. And it was always a thing of the left, it was always a thing of hippies and, and it was dismissed by people on the right as people that were trying to avoid reality, they were trying to, you know, escape reality. They couldn't handle reality. They weren't disciplined, they weren't, you know, if they were hard working people, they wouldn't be wasting their time getting high on drugs. There's that thought. I think one of the bridges to that is the benefit that it's had for soldiers. For soldiers and for people that are first responders, people that suffer from ptsd and that has trickled down into the general population of the people on the right, which is how you get a guy like Rick Perry that is all of a sudden becoming this very strong advocate for ibogaine and having it passed in Texas. So the initiative passed, which is huge.
- [93:26]
Paul Stamets
It's huge.
- [93:28]
Joe Rogan
It's a promising step in the direction of understanding that a lot of the division that we have have in this country is artificial. It's manufactured it.
- [93:36]
Paul Stamets
Is I, out of the blue, a country music singer, which I had no idea who she was. Casey Musgraves. She's superstar country music.
- [93:45]
Joe Rogan
I'm out of the loop.
- [93:46]
Paul Stamets
I. She reached out to me and she had a psilocybin experience that inspired her. She's has an album called Deeper. Well, that's just amazing. I was not in the country music until I listened to her and she reached out to me because of her psilocybin experience. And we rent. We decided to do Sing for Science. We sold out the Ryman Theater in Nashville in three hours. 2,500 people. These are country music people. 2,500 people, three hours. Unfortunately, she was in Mexico, she fell and she broke a rib. So we had to cancel the concert until September 18th or the sing for Science. But that's just an example. And.
- [94:25]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. Well, I think my friend Sturgill Simpson sort of opened up the door for psychedelics and country music with turtles all the way down.
- [94:31]
Paul Stamets
Yep.
- [94:31]
Joe Rogan
Now he basically wrote a song about God and psychedelics.
- [94:36]
Paul Stamets
It's. You know, I.
- [94:38]
Joe Rogan
That was a country song and everybody's like, hey, what the hell's going on?
- [94:42]
Paul Stamets
It's funny because psychedelics build bridges that marijuana doesn't. It's. It's. I met a lot of people who would never smoke a joint, but the idea of doing a slow side mushroom sound like fun to them. Right.
- [94:54]
Joe Rogan
Well, marijuana is also associated with lazy people and ne' er do wells and stinky people with bad ideas. You know, unfortunately. And I think, you know, look, there's a. One of the things that's interesting is the jiu jitsu community is there's a lot of stoners in the jiu jitsu community.
- [95:15]
Paul Stamets
A lot of people using psychedelics programs. Oh yeah. Performance.
- [95:18]
Joe Rogan
Oh yeah. Well, I know a bunch of people who have fought on mushrooms.
- [95:21]
Paul Stamets
Yeah.
- [95:21]
Joe Rogan
You know, I have a friend who is a world class kickboxer who had some of his greatest performances while he's fighting on mushrooms. And he said he could see what the guy was going to do before he did it.
- [95:30]
Paul Stamets
Yeah. This is the indigenous use of psilocybin is to see into the future. That's one of the things advantages I think I've had also I've been able to prognosticate into the future. There's a. We had this extraordinary individual told me a story which I think I have. Right. But I want to share it with you. There's a game that's very common even in the Philippines, but in Canada it's a German game eventually. And the idea is you put nails on a block of wood and use an ice pick and you have to hammer the nail in with one hit. And each time in a bar or party or whatever, people throw down money, $5, $20 colors, etc, a nail on an ice pick.
- [96:13]
Joe Rogan
So you have the point of the ice pick. You got to hit that nail, sink.
- [96:16]
Paul Stamets
It and sink it all the way into the wood. So of course you go around, people are drinking, etc. So the story, as I remember him telling me, is that he went to the bathroom. He's not a toker, he doesn't smoke pot. But someone said, hey, you want some mushrooms? And they're playing this game. And there was a. A bunch of his friends were gathered and he goes, oh, sure, I'll try some mushrooms. So he ate some mushrooms and he came back and he's the circle of Zara and people are betting, hey, come over and join us, join us, you know. And he watched for a while. Never had played this game.
- [96:48]
Joe Rogan
And.
- [96:48]
Paul Stamets
And then he started getting higher and higher and they said, come on, it's your turn. So he kind of looked at the nail. I mean, this is really hard to do. Looked at the nail and looked at the nail and focused on. He said he had such clarity of focus that everything else was blanked out. He looked at the nail and he just thought they would connect rather than hitting it. They would just connect. Bam. Slammed the nail down on the first attempt. People went, whoa, incredible. So they put down. Each person put down more money going around. So they came around. Everyone's missing, Everyone missing. Some people occasionally hit it a little bit, you know, but came around, came around to him. Now he's getting higher on the mushrooms, right? And he's looking at it, looking at it and he goes, bam, slams it again. People going, no way. Right? This is impossible. Right? So now, you know, there's a lot of money being piled up on the table here. They're coming around and everyone's going, impossible, not gonna happen. Can't do it a third time in a row. Looked at it, laser focused. God. Bam, slam it again. Now people are losing their right. They're like, what is going on here? And said. He said, really? To. With one guy who was just out of his mind that he could do this three times in a row. He went around again and this time he says, I'm going to really blow his mind. So he focused on the nail, focus on nail, had the hammer looked at him. Bam. Slammed it again.
- [98:15]
Joe Rogan
While he's.
- [98:15]
Paul Stamets
And Nailed it. Yeah, literally nailed it. So, so these examples of.
- [98:20]
Joe Rogan
Well, that brings you to the stone Dape theory.
- [98:22]
Paul Stamets
Well, it's the idea.
- [98:23]
Joe Rogan
Part of the concept.
- [98:24]
Paul Stamets
Well, part of the concept is you, you know, with 10 immense focus.
- [98:27]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [98:28]
Paul Stamets
You know, and many years. I, I have two black belts. I had schools for 30 years. Black belt in taekwondo and then Juan Do. I was in Shotokanchidaru, Gojo Ru and then Taekwondo and then Huarong do, which is like hapkido. But that idea of having a three dimensional perspective, one of my best, one of my fun experiences. I was in the dojang or dojo, but Josh Japanese as Korean and I had my first black belt and, and my head instructor was over there talking, talking at someone and then he had a baseball and he, and I heard later what he said. He goes, I told my friend, watch this. He threw a baseball at me. My peripheral vision, boom. I just caught the baseball and you know, just before it hit my head. But that idea of having that consciousness surrounding, that's why athleticism, with medium doses, minor doses of psilocybin, I think you can train your neurons to be able to have this peripheral awareness. That's extremely important.
- [99:35]
Joe Rogan
It also alleviates the anxiety that comes before performance. There's a lot of people like to use it before sparring because sparring is kind of scary for some people.
- [99:46]
Paul Stamets
But let's be clear, this is like the 8020 principle. Maybe the 9010 principle is not going to work for the majority of people. There are exceptional individuals who can actually benefit from this. So we're not.
- [99:56]
Joe Rogan
Disclaimer.
- [99:56]
Paul Stamets
Yeah, no disclaimer there. I don't want to make. No, none of this. I drove this race car.
- [100:02]
Joe Rogan
Listen, don't take any of our advice. No, but we're just talking about these things because there are anecdotal stories that are, they're fascinating.
- [100:10]
Paul Stamets
And anecdotal stories are like case studies in medicine. You get enough of them that you want to test them. This again, this is a testable hypothesis or theory in modern times.
- [100:20]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [100:21]
Paul Stamets
I hand coordination, you know, so psychomotor enhancement, you know, and. Yeah, this is why when you know the stamet stack is it speaks to this. We published in Nature scientific reports and a combination of psilocybin, niacin and lion's main increased psychomotor ability of tapping in 10 seconds from 46 to 66 taps. That's a lot. That's a lot in 10 seconds over 30 days. So people can argue about it, but the results are the results, you know, when you're talking about depression, anxiety, that's subjective. But I'm really interested in the psychomotor benefits of psilocybin with an admixture to enhance its performance. I think the root thing is psilocybin and being able to regenerate neurons is something I think is really important for us now with glioblastoma, you know, which unfortunately Terence did die from that. That is uncontrolled, you know, proliferation of neurons in the brain. Yeah, there's sure there's contraindications, there's something.
- [101:21]
Joe Rogan
That'S connected to that.
- [101:23]
Paul Stamets
No, not, I personally don't, no.
- [101:25]
Joe Rogan
Why not?
- [101:26]
Paul Stamets
Just because I mom, I, I don't have evidence to the contrary. I don't have evidence that also suggests that I see no correlation. N of 1 is not. You know, it's again because it's not.
- [101:41]
Joe Rogan
A common thing amongst people that are using psilocybin.
- [101:45]
Paul Stamets
But if you had 8 million people in the United States, you know, conducing psilocybin again you have a data set, right.
- [101:51]
Joe Rogan
So like it's not like cigarettes, right? We see cigarettes, we know you smoke cigarettes, there's a higher likelihood that you're going to get lung cancer. Right. It's very clear. So we've known that over time. The problem with psilocybin is it's been so taboo and so we don't have real data, we don't have, have, you.
- [102:08]
Paul Stamets
Know, but there's 235 clinical studies on psilocybin@clinicaltrials.gov right now.
- [102:15]
Joe Rogan
Isn't that amazing?
- [102:15]
Paul Stamets
235.
- [102:17]
Joe Rogan
Could you have imagined that 25 years.
- [102:18]
Paul Stamets
Ago there was none?
- [102:19]
Joe Rogan
Impossible.
- [102:20]
Paul Stamets
Yeah. And there for many indications, many different targets from addiction, cigarettes, you know, alcohol, opioid use to dementia, to Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, etc.
- [102:33]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [102:33]
Paul Stamets
So there's, you know, I think psilocybin has a PR problem. It sounds too good to be true, but you know, sometimes things can be true that have. But the reason why I think there's 235 clinical studies is because basically it's improving your neuroscape, you're improving the neurology. Everything that we're using right now is based to our health of our nervous system and the neuroscape. If we can enrich the neuroscape, then that has elaborations into everything that we do. And the fact is coupled with anti inflammatory activities and neurogenesis and neuro regeneration, neuro generation, neuroplasticity, which is synaptogenesis the neurons proliferate and then they shake hands and suddenly you have a new pathway.
- [103:18]
Joe Rogan
So there's anti inflammatory properties.
- [103:21]
Paul Stamets
Psilocyn has strong anti inflammatory properties.
- [103:23]
Joe Rogan
Interesting.
- [103:24]
Paul Stamets
So that's. That, that's just has come out in the scientific literature. So that's. I wasn't aware of that. Yeah, that's really interesting.
- [103:32]
Joe Rogan
How did they study that and what was the.
- [103:35]
Paul Stamets
Something called Interleukin 6. There was a clinical study that was just published just recently and a downregulated. It's a tumor necrosis factor. Interleukin 6a down regulated. That's an inflammatory cytokine. There's two anti inflammatory cytokines that are, are extraordinarily interesting to us. In our research team I have five PhD scientists, eight full time scientists. That's why I created my businesses to do research. But Interleukin 10 and Interleukin 1 RA are anti inflammatory cytokines. So when you can upregulate those then it kind of buffers the inflammatory effects. And so that's exciting to find these anti inflammatory. We were approved by the FDA for a Covid clinical trial based on the fact that we published this in the Journal of inflammation research that interleukin 10 and interleukin 1 RA were stimulated by agaricon and turkey tail mycelium grown on rice versus the rice control. So it was a peer reviewed article. When you know the pandemic started. The big concern was if you stimulate the immune system you could have a cytokine storm and you could overwhelm the body with many. It's been said many if not most people die from cytokine storm. Is there an overreaction of the immune system to Covid and to other diseases? So we were able to show you can augment in the literature your immune system buffered with the anti inflammatory properties. And that sort of resolves the argument of the, the cytokine storm concern. And then now we have a very successful study that shows that agarikon and turkey tail mycelium enhances the immunity of individuals long term.
- [105:32]
Joe Rogan
Six MONTHS LATER Mushroom that you gave me.
- [105:35]
Paul Stamets
Yeah. You still have that?
- [105:36]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, it's right there.
- [105:36]
Paul Stamets
That's a trophy.
- [105:38]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. Oh, it's never leaving the desk. That sucker.
- [105:41]
Paul Stamets
And this is a great example because this is an endangered species in Europe. It's on the red list of extinction in Europe. It is in Europe. These are growth rings. So this one's probably 25 years of age. It's a very nice specimen. Stanley's gave you this yes, one of the nicest specimens. So these are annual growth rings.
- [106:00]
Joe Rogan
Isn't it cool to see it on the desk?
- [106:02]
Paul Stamets
I love it. Thank you.
- [106:03]
Joe Rogan
People always ask what the hell is that?
- [106:05]
Paul Stamets
So this is a garakon called Fomitopsis officinalis, also known as liver so foamy. Dioscorides first described it in Greek medicine 2000 years ago as elixirum ad longum vitam, the elixir of long life.
- [106:18]
Joe Rogan
If someone took a little piece of that and put it in the ground, would it start making new agaricon?
- [106:23]
Paul Stamets
If it had spores, it looks like it goes inside the roots of trees. This one being as old as it is and being its spores are probably become not viable. But Agarikon has the white form and the brown form. It goes through this massive transition as biochemistry and because it's endangered and because highly variable in form, fruit body extracts of this makes no sense.
- [106:47]
Joe Rogan
Why is it endangered in Europe and not in America?
- [106:49]
Paul Stamets
Only grows in old growth forests. So the sky islands in Europe, in Austria, Slovenia is where this still can be found on larch trees. We now have I think 100, 115 strains of Agarikon, by far the largest library in the world. If you ask me. What is my most valuable possession is my strain library of Agarikon. It's a treasure of strains 1 out of 21 out of 100 times in the old growth forest will I find one. So we don't collect these unless it's going to be clear cut or we find them on the ground or if it's on my own property and then I take a small piece of tissue. It's the mycelium that is bioactive for the immune system. And this is what we found that it's scalable, the mycelium scalable. The fruit body extracts are not and it's highly variable. Most people don't know that. Well, they should know. But most mushrooms are parasitized by insects and that's because the insects spread spores. So the mushrooms invite insects to come in.
- [107:55]
Joe Rogan
So it can spread spores like cordyceps and ants.
- [107:58]
Paul Stamets
Yeah. Or like buzz pollin.
- [108:00]
Joe Rogan
That's the weirdest thing. When you see spiders and ants overwhelmed by Cordyceps.
- [108:04]
Paul Stamets
Yeah, it's. I like to say cordyceps has to eat too.
- [108:08]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, I mean this is the cycle of life, right.
- [108:11]
Paul Stamets
So this Agarikon is in the BioShield biodefense program we which by the way.
- [108:17]
Joe Rogan
This is your company host defense. You have great stuff, man. I buy your stuff.
- [108:22]
Paul Stamets
Thank you.
- [108:23]
Joe Rogan
You gave Me a bunch of it, but I buy it.
- [108:25]
Paul Stamets
Well, thank you for your support. We need it. I mean, I'm the only company that does research that I know of. I spend over a million dollars a year in fundamental research. Thinking outside of the box. Even though traditional Chinese medicine is fantastic and has a thousands of years history, all traditional medicines advance with new technologies. That's true across the board. The invention of in vitro propagation about 100 years ago. Growing mycelium now opens up this huge opportunity for us to, to dive into a deeper well of natural substances that can be used as adjunct therapies to enhance conventional medicine. This is a game changer. So 115 strains of Agarica and I submitted eight of them to the BioShield Biodefense Program after 9, 11, 2004, my TED talk talks about this. And I found two or three strains highly active against smallpox and also against bird flu. And if you go to National Public Radio, put stamets in smallpox, you'll see a vetted press release, you know, from DOD and the head of the BioShield program, Jack Secrest, saying that, whoops. These are some of the most significant results they've ever seen.
- [109:34]
Joe Rogan
Wow.
- [109:34]
Paul Stamets
The only 2 million samples submitted were in the top 10. The only natural product. Now that's in vitro. So that in vitro, this is sort of a timeline. And you don't have Boy with a microphone, do you? Jamie, what is that? You didn't see it? Okay, with Boy with a microphone, that's a 42 second clip we found in the vault. And it talks. It's me with my son when he's 4 years old. And I'm on the phone saying I've created this company to do research. Research is what we want to do. Truly. That's the origins of what I was trying to, why I created my business. So I still do that. So with the 115 strains, we're likely to have a super strain in our collection. Pandemics are coming all the time. We're in a viral storm. There's a bird flu pandemic where many of us are so surprised that it has not happened at a bigger level. But viral pandemics are also affecting other animals besides birds and pigs. 67% of beehives were lost in Montana this past year. 67%. Imagine if you had 67% loss of a herd of cattle or sheep. That's phenomenal. And bird flu is spread. It's making the jumps. It is coming, folks. And so what we want to do is design a clinical Study using agarikon to test against bird flu.
- [110:54]
Joe Rogan
I'd be interested to see what, if anything could be done with some of these mushrooms with chronic wasting disease, which is a huge concern among deer population and even some other animals like moose.
- [111:08]
Paul Stamets
And we're embedded into a mycelial landscape. Okay, mycelium is everywhere. The interactions of mycelium and animals, you know, is elaborate, complex. This is crazy. And if anyone out here can prove me wrong, please send me the reference. But it appears I'm the first person to realize that bees go to rotted logs with mycelium for immunological benefit.
- [111:33]
Joe Rogan
Really?
- [111:34]
Paul Stamets
First person? How is that possible? We all grew up with Winnie the Pooh. I mean, this is mind boggling. Again, hiding it didn't take a stroke of genius. But in my case, the bioshield results. And then I heard about colony collapse being vectored primarily by mites. This past year they identified the miticide resistant mites which most all of them are now are vectors of the deformed wing virus. Colony collapse is a threat to food biosecurity. And we found, and we publish this in Nature Scientific Reports. Extract of polypore mushroom and mycelium protects bees from viruses. We published that in Nature Scientific Reports. I'm the primary author. We were able to reduce viruses, the deformed wing virus BY I think 879 times in 12 days with one treatment. So that is phenomenal for protecting food. Biosecurity that helps all farmers. And there's a pandemic that's spreading. 67% loss, 60% loss generally across the United States this year. The worst colony collapse in history. This will make food prices go up and it doesn't stop because these viruses are proliferating throughout the environment. We found that palpoura mushroom, mycelium, grown on grain or grown on sawdust, not only reduces these viruses, but extends longevity. And so the longevity and interesting that this mushroom is known as elixirium ad longum vitam, the elixir of long life. We are all animals. Bees are animals. Birds are animals. You know, pigs are animals. Humans are animals. We are all, I think, can have an immunological benefit from, you know, in incorporating these, these fungi. Now we're allowed by the fda, FDA to say supporting innate immunity in healthy individuals. We're not allowed to make any disease claims. Ironically, we can't make that same claim with bees. We can say extends longevity. But this is where there's not common sense in government. I have an invention that could save hundreds of billions of dollars that protect Bees from colony collapse and we're roadblocked by regulation constantly. Oh, reduce virus in bees. You have an antiviral drug, what is it? No, we haven't been able to find antiviral drug. We think it's an entourage effect, an upreggling, you know, basic immunity. And then your endogenous immune system in this case of the bees can fight the viruses. So and this I think will translate into birds, into swine.
- [114:06]
Joe Rogan
So there's resistance to these results?
- [114:09]
Paul Stamets
No. Because your immunity is so called.
- [114:11]
Joe Rogan
No, no, no. I mean publicly, like you're saying you can't make these claims, but if you.
- [114:17]
Paul Stamets
Have results, we have fantastic results. I prefer anyone to scientific, scientific, you know, to nature scientific reports.
- [114:23]
Joe Rogan
So could you elaborate on what the resistance is?
- [114:27]
Paul Stamets
Well, the resistance is complicated and it's political. The old school conventional wisdom is that if you have a drug like effect then you have an undeclared drug in your product.
- [114:42]
Joe Rogan
Isn't that funny?
- [114:43]
Paul Stamets
Yeah, nature, even though it's from nature, even though bees go to rotted logs for immune benefit. And now there's five or six papers that have been published on this after my discovery showing that bees are doing this, their bees are actually benefiting from mushroom mycelium. So we're working with Washington State University, great people there, we're working with several funders, we have tested this now over and over again. This is an outdoor animal clinical study, double blind placebo controlled using the mycelium grown on rice or on sawdust versus the sawdust of the rice as a control. Clearly, clearly a benefit. So this is scalable. You can't harvest fruit bodies in a way that you can scale mycelium. Mycelium is exponential increase in mycelial mass virtually every week, 10 times 10 times 10 times 10 or even 10 times 100 times 100 times 100, massively scalable. I think I have found something as a portal through my psychedelic experiences that's fundamental to protecting life in this place planet, is that the mycelial networks are deep reservoirs of being able to immunologically enhance animals where we don't have to have all these antiviral drugs, antibiotic drugs, your endogenous immune systems are upregulated because over hundreds of millions of years we've been interacting with these. It's our immunodeppression and suppression because of all the factors we know, bad diet, toxins, you know, lifestyle, all those things that this is highly scalable. So now we're trying to navigate through the regulatory landscape. There was a Strange committee that was in secret met once a year for any new ingredient to add to bees because bees make honey. Humans contain honey. If we use our product, they could say we have an undisclosed drug in the honey, so whatever. But it also translates to wild bees. It turns out that APIs melephra, the honeybee, when they have the viruses, they go to flowers frequented by bumblebees. So colony collapse is happening not only with a cultivated honeybee, but it's spread to other bees. This is an ecological catastrophe of a viral pandemic that's spreading around the world. We have the solution right now. It's highly scalable. And this regulatory committee disappeared in the past two years. This is before the last administration was a vote, but they didn't tell anybody. So we had an application with them for two years to have this exempted.
- [117:13]
Joe Rogan
Committee's gone.
- [117:14]
Paul Stamets
The whole committee's gone. It didn't even tell us that it was gone. So we went two years spinning our thumbs waiting for them to respond. This is where we need to have common sense to come back into government. This is that where our government has too many hurdles to practical solutions that are demonstratable, scalable and affordable that can the return on investment as massive. And yet we fear the fda, we fear the USDA because they are stuck in a rut, literally. Maybe they could use psilocybin here to expand their horizons because they want to know the mode of action, the mechanism of action. Well, we didn't know the mechanism of action of aspirin until the 1970s, but it had a benefit. If it has a clear benefit it and does not cause harm, then they should be exempted for scalability. Now, there's another factor to this which is wonderful. There's a new startup company called Quorum by my friend Chris Katrovitz. Disclosure. You know, I'm involved with them, but they have a metarisium, a fungus that kills mites. So it's also been approved by the USDA for thrips and other greenhouse insects. It's not toxic to fish, not toxic to humans. So the combination of using Metarizium with the agaricon and other polypore mushroom mycelium, we think has a great potential future. So I think there's a lot of resources in nature that can augment conventional agricultural practices. There's a lot of resources in nature that can augment conventional medical practices. They are not necessarily an opposition. What is an opposition, unfortunately, and you've alluded to this, is a lot of the pharmaceutical business interests are not excited about A natural product, reducing the need for vaccines, augmenting immunity. There is money in disease.
- [119:09]
Joe Rogan
Right? That. That's always the problem. Money.
- [119:13]
Paul Stamets
You can tell I'm passionate about this because I have such a deliverable, provable solution that's scalable.
- [119:18]
Joe Rogan
I wonder if.
- [119:19]
Paul Stamets
And I'm. So. My article was published in 2018, and I tell my research team, you know, wtf? We are meeting with WSU constantly. And now we have renewed interest, thankfully, because of some big stakeholders in the almond industry. And every almond you eat was visited. A flower was visited by a bee. The almond industry is in crisis right now. But it's not almonds, it's apples, it's cherries. It's across the board right now. Agriculture has been severely affected by these viral pandemics. And these same viral pandemics are mitigated, I believe, in commonality, with these polypore mushrooms that grow in the woods.
- [119:56]
Joe Rogan
I wonder if that would also help animal agriculture because, like, the ubiquitous use of antibiotics is a real concern with people with cows and with chickens.
- [120:04]
Paul Stamets
And we had the. There's a viral pandemic of a form of bird flu. Not H5N1, but another bird flu. I can't remember. I think it was H7N2. In Iowa and Minnesota about 10 years ago, they were euthanizing millions and millions of chickens and turkeys and ducks. You can look this up. There's an organic farm, and we gave one quarter of a gram of agarikund mycelium per chicken in their feed. And we began that chicken. There's two big chicken hens, about 20,000 layers, birds that lay eggs. And. And it became an oasis of immunity. Those chickens were immune from bird flu. A quarter of a gram of those mycelium, and we protected them.
- [120:51]
Joe Rogan
That's incredible.
- [120:52]
Paul Stamets
But a crazy thing happened. The USDA had an insurance policy to pay the chicken growers. And the chicken growers quickly learned that they could get an insurance check, lay off the employees, get the cash for lost profits. And so they were not incentivized.
- [121:10]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, I've heard that from people that are deeply connected to that industry that there was a bunch of euthanizations that didn't have to happen.
- [121:16]
Paul Stamets
Didn't have to happen.
- [121:17]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. And they did it and they. They inflated this whole concept, you know, because they. The numbers got grossly inflated because they were euthanizing chickens for profit.
- [121:27]
Paul Stamets
Yeah. Bird flu is a very serious, serious issue. Now, I know vaccines. Vaccines are very hot subject, and I know you've spoken on that. You've had some excellent guests by the way, excellent guests or researchers on this, but I just want to give a thoughtful discussion between viruses and vaccines. Which is worse, the virus or the vaccine? I'm a libertarian. I believe every family, every individual has a right, right to make an informed decision. The problem that I see with the vaccine industry, the industrial vaccine complex, is the failure to disclose. I don't think Americans are stupid. I think Americans become stupid when they're not informed. My partner as a physician, she goes giving hep B vaccines to a child makes no sense as a sexually transmit a disease. Why are you giving a vaccine to a 10 year old and a baby? And in med school when anyone would mention that, why are we doing this? They were vilified. Vilified, Shut down. It's like what happened to thoughtful good science? It's just a reasonable question.
- [122:45]
Joe Rogan
Money happened. It's also. These vaccine manufacturers are immune to the financial consequences of the side effects.
- [122:53]
Paul Stamets
Absolutely. We need to have full disclosure now. Let me go through a thought experiment. Listen, this is my opinion. Other people may just visually disagree with me, but let's do. There's two thought experiments I want to do first. One million lives were saved with a vaccine. One person dies. Hey, you took it for the home teen. Sorry. One person dies. Out of 100,000. Still, ratio is pretty good. My mind, my judgment. Sorry again, you took it for the home team.
- [123:25]
Joe Rogan
Team.
- [123:26]
Paul Stamets
One out of ten thousand. Okay. Still the ratio is pretty good. Okay. One out of thousand. Okay. One out one hundred. You're making me nervous. One out of ten. No, that's where I draw the line. I'd say forget it. That's now the contradiction that we have, the opposing forces here that we have is that is it better for society to have vaccinations to protect the common or is it better for you to have an individual decision for your family to protect yourself if you want to. If you are going to make that decision, you should have an informed decision based on the best of science. All vaccines and all companies should disclose what is the percentage of protection. I have a physician friend who says 30% protection, but I'm sick for four or five days. I don't know. That's not worth it. 70% protection. Okay, all right. You know, so everyone has to balance the risk benefit ratio.
- [124:32]
Joe Rogan
But we need real data to be able to.
- [124:34]
Paul Stamets
We need the real data. We need full disclosure.
- [124:37]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [124:37]
Paul Stamets
And for anyone to accuse another physician and vilify them because they ask a logical question and they're humiliated by the medical community is fundamentally unfair. What happened with Good science. You have to follow the science. And this is so important. And that's why I think we're getting this cacophony, this echo chamber where the voices that are the loudest tend to be the stupidest sometimes or the most compromised. Yeah. And they drown out a dissent. We all should be able to ask for the data and the information to make an individual decision.
- [125:14]
Joe Rogan
And science shouldn't be this ideological or ideologically captured thing.
- [125:19]
Paul Stamets
That's why I, I hate the term anti vaxxers. I think it's a pejorative term. I think it's prejudiced. You know, what about people who just want to have information? Oh, you're an anti vaxxer.
- [125:29]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. Well, it's pushed just to scare people into compliance. That's the whole idea, having these pejoratives and throw them around, around and no one wants to be labeled that, so you immediately get scared.
- [125:40]
Paul Stamets
But enhancing innate immunity and healthy individuals to keep us healthy.
- [125:47]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, that would be bad.
- [125:49]
Paul Stamets
That's. That's better.
- [125:50]
Joe Rogan
Exactly. Well, that's the other problem that I had with the pandemic in general is that metabolic health was never discussed. It was always, there's only one way out of this. And having conversations with people that you could see, like visually look at them, does not metabolically healthy person. And these people are telling you the only way to health is through a medicine that they are financially incentivized to push. That's just crazy. And when those are the prominent voices that are on television and the media and you're getting this from politicians, and then on top of that, you literally have the federal government censoring social media and not allowing people to have dissenting opinions, including people from Harvard and MIT and all the people in the Great Barrington study.
- [126:32]
Paul Stamets
Why don't we have an open source national database showing the protection of vaccines and the risk of not getting one so individuals can make a decision, Age related, all these other factors, the data is there. Not making that data available to the public increases distrust. And so what the medical community has unfortunately done is they've bred a bunch of dissenters by not giving full access to the information.
- [127:02]
Joe Rogan
Well, I think that really heightened during the pandemic because I don't think people had that much of a distrust for vaccines unless they knew someone who was vaccine injured, unless they were gaslit and were told that their child or someone else that had gotten vaccine injured, that that was not the cause of it. And those are the people that were very skeptical and they formed these tight communities, but they were very Scared to be open and public about it because they were destroyed. You know, I famously remember Jenny McCarthy coming out and saying that she believes her child was vaccine injured and the backlash was spectacular, essentially destroyed her career.
- [127:37]
Paul Stamets
Well, N1 experiments are always like, did it really happen or was it just a co occurrence of some other factor that combined with the event of the vaccination. Sure. I mean this is where you need to have high population studies. But those studies are available. Why they're cloaked in secrecy and why are they not made available?
- [127:54]
Joe Rogan
It's money.
- [127:56]
Paul Stamets
Yeah.
- [127:56]
Joe Rogan
I mean the financial interest is astounding. The amount of money that's involved in it and the amount of money that they spend every year. They spend $8 billion. The pharmaceutical drug industry spends $8 billion just on advertising and on propaganda every year. That's so much money. And they're, they spend so much money on television networks, you know, I mean, how many times Anderson Cooper brought to you by Pfizer. You see these apps, ads and that shapes the narrative.
- [128:24]
Paul Stamets
Unfortunately it does. But let me again just be clear from my point of view, vaccines have done a lot of benefit, but they don't benefit everyone all the time. Not all vaccines are the same. We have to be able to delineate a thoughtful scientific method with disclosed information.
- [128:47]
Joe Rogan
Absolutely.
- [128:48]
Paul Stamets
That's accessible to everyone. So you can make the best judgment for yourself and your family. Yeah.
- [128:53]
Joe Rogan
And you've got to remove this financial protection that they have from liability because if they don't have that, they're going to just jack up the amount that they give people. Because there's profit in that, unfortunately. And then there are vaccines that are beneficial. Let's find out which ones they are. Which one. What, what can be mitigated in terms of like, how can you make your overall metabolic health better? Before you even think about any of these things, we know for a fact that during the COVID crisis in particular, the people that have the most problem with it were the people that had comorbidities, people that were obese, people that had all sorts of issues going on because of poor diet, poor lifestyle choices and even, you know, genetic problems.
- [129:34]
Paul Stamets
Yeah. One of the immunologists we were working with told me something I didn't know is that are you immunocompromised or immunodepright? Trust vaccines don't work very well. So they be those people become reservoirs for mutation.
- [129:47]
Joe Rogan
Right. Which is the argument for why you don't give it to children or their babies. Because their immune system isn't even functional yet.
- [129:53]
Paul Stamets
Yeah. I'm, you know, I. Again, the, the hep B one is a pretty clear example. That's a nutty one. Yeah, there's a bunch of nutty ones.
- [130:01]
Joe Rogan
But the point is the vaccine schedule. If you look at what we used to take and you look at what happened when they lost their liability during the Reagan administration, all of a sudden the schedule goes way up and they start adding things like hep B. And then you realize like, oh, it's very profitable to do that. Imagine how much more money you make if you're injecting everybody with a Hep B vaccine. If you sell Hep B vaccines. Simple mathematics.
- [130:26]
Paul Stamets
Also, I've met people in the pharma industry who are extremely well intended, who are great scientists. Oh, absolutely.
- [130:33]
Joe Rogan
Aren't the issue.
- [130:34]
Paul Stamets
Right. They've also confessed to me that they face these, this humiliation, you know, being ostracized for just asking questions. But again, full disclosure, let people make up their own minds. What's the cost benefit ratio? Is it one out of a million? One out of ten?
- [130:52]
Joe Rogan
Well, it's also, you should have to show all the studies too. You shouldn't just show the curated studies that you generated specifically with a goal of making an efficacy like having a result that shows that this is effective. You, if you do 10 studies, you should show all 10 studies.
- [131:08]
Paul Stamets
Yeah, well, actually, that's why ClinicalTrials.gov exists.
- [131:12]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [131:12]
Paul Stamets
Is that we're chair picking, doing studies in Bulgaria and India and Taiwan. And the pharma would choose the clinical study that supported their nerves.
- [131:20]
Joe Rogan
Exactly, exactly. And then they could use deceptive language to show the efficacy.
- [131:25]
Paul Stamets
But what I'm getting at is that we have such a reservoir of potential ways of supporting immunity in healthy individuals in nature. That is not pharma based, that's based on the entourage effect. And say when you activate the receptors in your immune system, there's something beneficial. I believe there's cross talk between the receptors. The receptors are, oh, something really good is coming down the pipe and they start creating an entourage effect or the collaboration. More receptors are acting, activated that have collaterally more benefits. And so that goes to the homeostasis and the uplifting of the homeostasis of the immune system. That is a higher ready state of being able to respond. And then conventional medicine can work better. But using conventional medicine on an immunocompromised individual asking their immune system to respond is an uphill battle.
- [132:19]
Joe Rogan
Right? Yeah. It's interesting too that like natural remedies are automatically dismissed by people that think of themselves as intelligent.
- [132:27]
Paul Stamets
Science based people, well, look at artemisicin.
- [132:30]
Joe Rogan
But isn't it weird though that like, we dismiss it? But if you really understand the like, think about how many different pharmaceutical drugs are formulated because of discoveries of natural plants in the rainforest.
- [132:43]
Paul Stamets
The majority of them, and the most recent example is the antimalarial drug against Plasmodium falciparum from an artemisia bush. And it's artemisicin. And it came from, it came from artemisia. It's a plant extract.
- [133:01]
Joe Rogan
Isn't that wild? Yet science based people will automatically dismiss what you would call a natural remedy, even though all of them, every kind, like nothing exists on Earth that's not really natural, it's coming from nature.
- [133:18]
Paul Stamets
I'm in agreement with you. I think that we're just reinventing molecules that have been assembled somewhere else and we think it's. That's why the synthetic biologists. I'm honored to get that reward. Thank you. Synbio Beta Conference. That's what I think really kind of flipped them on their heads, is don't go down the rabbit hole of excluding natural products thinking you can invent a molecule that's going to be better in the theater of evolution. We've tested these natural products over tens of millions of years, literally our primate ancestors. And so we've got a pretty good exponential data set there to be able to see what works and what doesn't. Many mushrooms? Not many, but some mushrooms are poisonous, some are edible. It's a weird statistic about, and again, 1 to 2% fudge factor here. So please don't attack me all over the place. But there is 1.5 to 5 million species of fungi. There's about 150,000 species of mushrooms that are estimated. So out of that 5 million, on the extreme 1.5 million less than 10%, 150,000. We've only identified about 15,000 species. So we only identified 10% of the mushrooms that exist today. Wow. Interestingly, of those 15,000 species, about 1% are poisonous, 1 or 2%, 1 or 2% are psychoactive, and 1 to 2% are good edibles. So 97, 95, 94%, whatever the math shows are there. But they're not toxic. But mushrooms are molecular wizards. These are pharmaceutical factories that are creating huge numbers. And we know from their genomic analysis 10 times more genes are activated in the mycelium of lion's man mane than in the lion's mane mushroom itself. Why is that? Well, the mycelium has to navigate these thin threads through a hostile microbial Environment defending itself until the mycelial mat becomes large enough at the end of its life cycle to produce a fruit body. And then lion's mane mushrooms rot in four days. The mycelium that grew, it could exist for years. The mycelium is the immune system of the mushroom. And as a result we have a lot more compounds being expressed. Now, some people say, well, not all those compounds necessarily are beneficial. Aha, well, that's true. But now we've tested them enough that we can see real world benefit. Dean Ornish just published a study this past year on Alzheimer's using lifestyle adjustments, exercise, meditation, vitamins and lion's mane mushroom mycelium. Dramatically significant benefit in slowing down the progression of Alzheimer's through lifestyle, vitamins and using lion's mane mushroom mycelium. Now, which did what? Yes, you can try to analyze that, but you'd have to separate every single little component to see which one's the most significant. And yet where's the studies combining 10 vaccines or 20 vaccines in our child to see which one is actually conferring the benefit or causing an adverse effect? We have to, at some point, you know, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. At some point, if it has a demonstrable positive effect like we have with bees, and it protects agriculture and extends the longevity of bees and it supports the endogenous immune system and healthy individuals, isn't that good? Why do we have to get lost in the details of trying to explain it? If we can't explain it, then we won't let it be out there for the benefit of the commons. We're at cross purposes. This is where science needs to have common sense and the government and the regulatory industry needs to have common sense. And we get that by exemptions, emergency exemptions, and we should get that for emergency exemption. Right now we are on a bee apocalypse. We are, folks, 67% of beehives lost in Montana. What if that was a human population?
- [137:25]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [137:25]
Paul Stamets
All hands on deck.
- [137:27]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [137:28]
Paul Stamets
So it is. And there is a transference of viruses between animal species. We're seeing that in real time now. The scariest thing is, is when you have multiple viral infections in one person who's immunocompromised and you have horizontal gene transfer. This is what virologists very amongst themselves, they talk about this all the time, but the public is not aware. You could have individuals. And when you have so many dairy farmer workers exposed, so many people in contact, concentrated clusters of animals and farms, you have so many potential patient Zeros. The patient zero is a person who is the nexus for spreading a mutated form of a virus. Horizontal gene transfer is happening all the time now. Now it's concentrated, it's accelerating, it's an exponential increase of risk. Bill Gates has talked about this, many other researchers have talked about this. This is really something we should pay attention to. And I think the simplest, easiest, scalable way is enhancing immunity in healthy individuals. And by doing so, I think you can let your endogenous immune system work better. And I think conventional medicine will work better also in concert.
- [138:48]
Joe Rogan
It also speaks to the problem with industrial agriculture in general. Right. These are unnatural environments where these animals are, you know, living in their own waste on a consistent basis, which is, you know, it enhances the possibility of disease and regenerative agriculture enhances the possibility of harmony amongst nature.
- [139:13]
Paul Stamets
And then the counter argument is that we have better nutrition, we can feed the world so the people are more people happier. You know, again we're at this, we have contrast of opposites. And I wish I had the easy solution. I think I have the solution for bees. I think it's scalable for protecting chickens and livestock, I hope, you know. And we're now designing clinical studies on the path to finding clinical studies with bird flu using Agarikon. We don't have the results, so I'm not making a medical claim here, but the evidence so far is so encouraging. And I'm working with top notch virologists, absolutely some of the best virologists who came to me because they saw the paper in Nature scientific Reports and they thought, oh, fungi, fungi could help us, you know, protect ourselves, we can viruses. So they came through the back door of the scientific community. Not a Joe Rogan listener. They might be, I don't know, maybe they are now. But they came to me through the scientific literature saying we should try this with people. So those are the scientists I like that are open minded enough that rather than just a molecular geneticist, you know, synthetic bio people, they were actually saying, well, it's a provable result. We don't know why, but we should explore this because we can argue for 100 years about why or we could deliver it tomorrow and have it up. Positive effect.
- [140:37]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, it makes sense. I have to ask you this question, it's unrelated, but I always wanted to know, why do morel mushrooms grow around burns?
- [140:47]
Paul Stamets
That is such a great question. And you know what? That's the question that we've been asking for so long.
- [140:54]
Joe Rogan
I love morel mushrooms.
- [140:55]
Paul Stamets
I love morel Mushrooms too. You know, they are poisonous.
- [140:58]
Joe Rogan
Ah.
- [140:59]
Paul Stamets
Unless you cook them.
- [141:00]
Joe Rogan
Really?
- [141:01]
Paul Stamets
Yeah.
- [141:01]
Joe Rogan
Oh, boy. That's important.
- [141:02]
Paul Stamets
Many people have died from morel mushrooms. Yeah.
- [141:05]
Joe Rogan
Wow. That's crazy.
- [141:07]
Paul Stamets
You don't want to cook morel mushrooms in a closed kitchen without ventilation. There are volatile compounds coming out of the morels totally denatured in cooking. Delicious. But many, many examples of this in Japan. I was in Japan fan, you know, 15 years.
- [141:21]
Joe Rogan
So if you don't have an overhead fan, don't fry morels.
- [141:24]
Paul Stamets
Oh yeah. If you open up the window, but just don't inhale the fumes. Wow. The North American Mycological association is the association for Canada, Mexico, the United States and there's a poison control group in that and they collect all the, all the details. It's namico.org n a m y c o.org they're the go to place. Ironically, because of HIPAA rules, the mycologists have been disconnected from the patients in the medical community because now there is a firewall between them. We can anonymize the case reports, but there's a firewall of information because of HIPAA and disclosures of patient conditions that has really inhibited the flow of information. Nevertheless, namco.org, north American Mycological association, namy co.org and my professor, Dr. Michael Bug is a giant, you know, in consulting for adverse effects and mushroom poisonings. So morels are delicious. But to answer your question, Morel mycelium seems to be everywhere then for horse burns and they come up.
- [142:41]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [142:41]
Paul Stamets
Where were they before?
- [142:43]
Joe Rogan
Right. Do they exist in places that don't have burns? Yes, but rarely.
- [142:49]
Paul Stamets
No, we think all the time.
- [142:50]
Joe Rogan
All the time. We think the very common amongst burns.
- [142:53]
Paul Stamets
They'Re everywhere, force are right. And when the forest burn, it knocks down all the competition and it becomes very alkaline. The absence of organic material and competitors, competitor fungi, the change in the ph. And so I think, we think also from the Gaian hypothesis point of view, it's a great way of nature to rebound because they're sinful, they attract animals, they attract insects and birds come in, drop seeds and then they become an oasis point for the regeneration of an ecosystem. Never underestimate the intelligence of nature. And nature has figured this out. You know, nature does not exist in a vacuum. There's always these repopulation vectors happening and it's collaborative, it's not competitive. There is competition between the fungi, but when the competitors are knocked down, the morals come come up.
- [143:43]
Joe Rogan
That's fascinating. Another fascinating thing is that the largest Living organism on Earth in the Pacific Northwest.
- [143:50]
Paul Stamets
Yeah. Armillari Astoy. Yeah. Some people call gallica two different things, but yeah, I flew over it. It's a 2200 acre, you know, basically a clear cut. Killed all the trees. In my book, Mycelium Running, I have the best photographs of the largest organism in the world. And I hired an airplane. And first time I couldn't see it because I was too low. Second time I had a spiral up.
- [144:11]
Joe Rogan
Can you explain what it is to people?
- [144:13]
Paul Stamets
It's a honey mushroom, is a parasite on trees. It's edible. The honey mushrooms on hardwoods tend to taste better. But this one is on conifers and. And it comes up in clusters. It forms black rhizomorphs, black mycelium. It's called laminated root rot. Many listeners here know what that is. It kills fruit trees. But this is a marauding parasite that created a contiguous mat over 2,200 acres. And in this case, it killed all the trees. So they went ashen gray in color and they dried out and they were dead because of fire hazard from lightning strikes. The Forest Service came in and they cut all the dead trees and they created this beautiful outline of the largest mycelial mat in the world because you could see where the dead trees were.
- [145:04]
Joe Rogan
Can we see what that looks like in an image?
- [145:06]
Paul Stamets
I'm trying to find a good picture. It's also in Mycelium Running, so. But anyhow, that's an example now. Oh, kill the trees. That's terrible. But it created grasslands for unglates, right. You know, so deer and moose, elk can come in. So it's way of. I think it's a way of this rebalancing of nature, right?
- [145:28]
Joe Rogan
Where you're dealing with millions and millions.
- [145:30]
Paul Stamets
Of acres, millions and millions of acres. There is a real big problem with the bark beetle right now. You know, that's a problem. If the ecosystems are shifting in response to stress. And, you know, with our mind's view of only one lifetime, we're very myopic. I think we need to look out at a thousand year. I mean, what is the lens of time that we actually look at ecosystems? What's the right lens to use? Depends upon your vested interests. You know, as a human, as a deer, as an ecosystem, they could be very different.
- [146:07]
Joe Rogan
Right. It's just such a fascinating thing. The largest known organism on Earth exists in the Pacific Northwest.
- [146:17]
Paul Stamets
There's one cell wall thick.
- [146:18]
Joe Rogan
That's so nuts.
- [146:19]
Paul Stamets
Think about its immune system.
- [146:21]
Joe Rogan
You know what I found out recently that I Had no idea. Aspen trees. When you see aspen trees, it's one plant.
- [146:27]
Paul Stamets
Yeah. It's one contiguous thing. They're the two competitors for that title, by the way.
- [146:30]
Joe Rogan
Isn't that nuts?
- [146:31]
Paul Stamets
They're the two competitors.
- [146:32]
Joe Rogan
When you see these, I. I always thought when you see aspen forest, that it's a bunch of different individual aspen trees. Nope.
- [146:42]
Paul Stamets
No. You know, there's all sorts of amazing discoveries. Here's one that blows my mind and I had to write it down because it's a new species. There is a fungus that's related to Aragon. It's in the Clavocipitaceae, and it was found by a student at Western Virginia University. It is in morning glory seeds that produces lsd.
- [147:10]
Joe Rogan
Well, Terrence talked about that.
- [147:11]
Paul Stamets
No, this is before Tarantino talked about.
- [147:14]
Joe Rogan
Morning glowy seeds and having psychedelic experiences.
- [147:17]
Paul Stamets
It turns out it's a symbiotic fungus that's growing in there. And it's called. It's called paraglam Dula Clandestina. What a great name. Clandestina. The clandestine.
- [147:27]
Joe Rogan
Don't they do something to commercial morning glory seeds to make sure that people don't trip on them?
- [147:32]
Paul Stamets
I don't know.
- [147:33]
Joe Rogan
I think they do. I think that's another thing that Terence is talking about. How gross it was that they. They alter morning glory seeds because they knew that people were using them for psychedelics.
- [147:42]
Paul Stamets
Well, if they sterilized them or used a fungicide, that would make sense. But graduate student need to give her credit. Is a Western Virginia University. Karine Hazel Penny on.
- [147:53]
Joe Rogan
Yes, there it is.
- [147:54]
Paul Stamets
Look how young she is. Very young. She made a discovery heretofore unknown to science. And not only it produces LSD compounds. It is a symbiotic fungus helping the morning glory survive.
- [148:09]
Joe Rogan
Amazing.
- [148:10]
Paul Stamets
Think about every young person out there. The field of mycology is underfunded, understudied, under reported, underutilized. This is a fantastic treasure trove of new potential discoveries. I have long stated I think the field of mycology should be funded as well as the computer industry because it's so fundamental to the survival of our species. It's that big.
- [148:36]
Joe Rogan
No, I couldn't agree with you more. You're aware of Brian Murarescu, right? That was one of the more fascinating things that they found in those. When they studied those vases that they found ergot in them from the Eleusinian Mysteries.
- [148:50]
Paul Stamets
Has Brian tripped out?
- [148:52]
Joe Rogan
I don't know. You have to ask him.
- [148:55]
Paul Stamets
I love it when scientists and researchers don't admit that they've tripped. But I can.
- [149:02]
Joe Rogan
I don't know if it's a non admission. I think in his case he wanted to be objective. So he wanted to study these things without being. Is that he's worried about being labeled as someone who's promoting them because they like it.
- [149:15]
Paul Stamets
Well, an extreme example, but I have some merit. I mean, would you rather be taught by an airline pilot has experience or someone who just read a book? So the late Roland Griffiths is a dear friend. Johns Hopkins. He is credited as being the big pioneer for psilocybin in medical research. When I ask him, have you tripped on psilocybin? When I was at his house in the backyard, I said, he just smiled. I'm not going to answer that question. Well, then after he died, I met some of his friends and he goes, oh, yeah, Roland tripped. But he didn't want to tell anyone because for the fear that he could lose his objectivity or be criticized.
- [150:00]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, Rick Strassman had an interesting perspective on that too. When I first met him, he was very reluctant to talk about DMT experiences that he had personal, personally, because he had run those FDA studies that were documented in dmt the spirit molecule, the book.
- [150:16]
Paul Stamets
He was very reticent to talk about it. And then he sort of came out of the closet on that fully. And then when I asked Roland's friends, well, where did he like to trip? Trip, because you're in a hospital environment with all these doctors and, you know, your stress levels go up just being in a hospital environment. And he said, well, Roland's favorite place to trip was on a mountaintop with three friends with a beautiful view and a fire.
- [150:40]
Joe Rogan
Perfect, perfect, perfect.
- [150:44]
Paul Stamets
What's the quality of experience now? Again, this is for healthy normals, not people who need to have medical assistance. But there are some very good psychotherapists out there and psychonauts in the psychedelic assisted therapy movement. The center, the California Institute for integrative studies, CIIL s, I think.orgor.eu has a program training psychedelic therapists. You don't have to be a medical physician to be able to hold someone's hand, to have a guided experience. Now, there's a lot of charlatans out there. Be warned, folks, there's a lot of problems.
- [151:25]
Joe Rogan
That's a lot. That is a problem.
- [151:26]
Paul Stamets
But there are some excellent therapists out there. And for many people who can't get into a clinical study, be careful, consult a qualified medical practitioner, put that on the record. But a lot of people have benefited without having to go through traditional medical, you know, constructs of A hospital right to have benefit.
- [151:50]
Joe Rogan
And then they're reluctant to talk about it because the illegality of it, unfortunately. And you know, if you have a chance job, that is where you have to be taken seriously.
- [152:00]
Paul Stamets
It was. You could be lose your medical license. But the University of Washington, Tony Back, Anthony Back, published a clinical study on using psilocybin for physicians and nurses who were emotionally harmed and distressed by people angry at them because of COVID in the hospital. And they were spit upon and they were attacked viciously, physically, sometimes in the hospital. They had PTSD for just trying to provide good medical support. So he did a clinical study that was published this last year showing the benefits because the nurses and physicians, when they got out of the system, they can't provide medical care. Society loses. So they were able to reconcile the emotional harm that they experience from angry patients and being assaulted. And they were able to then return many of them back into the medical profession, you know, with a, you know, healing from that. So realize aggression and anger affects everyone around you. The advantage of psilocybin, I think just like a pebble in the pond of a tragedy, creates ripples of distress throughout society when someone who is highly adversely affected, angry and, you know, violent and all these antisocial behaviors, when they suddenly switch just like that. It's a pebble in the pond of positivity. A great example. A law enforcement officer by the name of Sarco from Boston just received his religious exemption for using psychedelics. So he is a police officer and his chief of police is now retired. He has been an advocate because he saw Sarco who experienced all these negative. Love to have him on the show sometime. He can really speak authoritatively to other law enforcement officers saying, this has helped me. So I have a law enforcement officer.
- [154:07]
Joe Rogan
I'd love to talk about him.
- [154:08]
Paul Stamets
I. I'd love to for you. He's the real deal. I have a RCMP officer friend in Vancouver who took me to his favorite psilocybin mushroom shop in Vancouver. I couldn't believe it. We walked in this psilocybin mushroom shop. They didn't know who I was, thankfully. And they were selling the stamina stack, which is kind of weird because I had my name on it. And we walk in there and say this, and this is where I tell all my law enforcement officers to come to take to get their psilocybin. I said, I'm sorry, but I. I'm trying to juxtaposition this, you know, how does this work? And he goes, well, you know, this is good Perhaps for ice also. He said, you know, how. You know in the United States, law enforcement officers are aggressive and mean? They tend to intimidate you and, you know, subjugate you. I said, we found a better way up here, and it's through psilocybin. I said, what would you do? I says, well, we have learned the following. Now, when I have to arrest somebody, I know they have a warrant out for them. I walk up to him and I say, and I always walk up with a smile on my face. Never a harsh look, always a smile on my face. I said, I have good news and I have bad news. What do you want to hear first? He said, invariably, everybody wants to say, tell me the good news. And he goes, the good news is you can finish your cup of coffee. And they go, okay, what's the bad news, dude, I gotta arrest you. And he goes, the amount of cooperation and the reduction of the threat level for the safety of the law enforcement and the cooperation that they get in the SWAD car when these people that are just shooting this shit. Law enforcement officer, I know you're doing your job, but wow, thank you for being so nice arresting me. He said, it's a game changer. Changer. It's reduced the threat to us physically of making arrests.
- [155:58]
Joe Rogan
It makes sense. It doesn't escalate.
- [156:00]
Paul Stamets
Yeah, it doesn't escalate. They de escalate it. And he goes, you won't believe the things I learned, you know, from these people you're arresting now. You know, who tell me things they've never gotten out of an interrogation, but they were so respected, and the fact that they had to do their job without becoming adversarial.
- [156:18]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [156:19]
Paul Stamets
Note to self. Right. Note to everyone. Right.
- [156:21]
Joe Rogan
Note to everyone. And all conflicts involve two or more people. It does. They're not. It's not just, this is the only way to react to something. It's how you react, how they react to your reaction. There's a cascading effect.
- [156:39]
Paul Stamets
Well, I have great faith in humanity. I've seen that.
- [156:42]
Joe Rogan
I do, too.
- [156:43]
Paul Stamets
I have seen the best. I mean, I've seen people.
- [156:46]
Joe Rogan
Most people are great.
- [156:47]
Paul Stamets
Most people are great. And they're better when they go through a psilocybin experience that amplifies the best of people, and it also helps them resolve a lot of the baggage. You can think of the inflammatory actions of the anger, and you did something and you don't want to tell anybody, but you're haunted by that. You inadvertently harmed somebody and you went off the deep end. You Harmed somebody else. Else. It's a cascading event of harm.
- [157:14]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [157:15]
Paul Stamets
And when you. These people are resolved, going, that was a bad chapter in my life. I had one really bad day, or maybe a series of them. But that does not define me, who I am, as a person. I have a better self. And it's now and in the future.
- [157:30]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [157:30]
Paul Stamets
It's not in the past.
- [157:31]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. That's the perspective we should all have, and that's the thing that we should all strive for. Be the best version of you that you can be. And you. We've all made terrible mistakes in the past, but the idea is to have learned from them and to be a better person because of that.
- [157:47]
Paul Stamets
Well, the medical community has come together on this, on psychedelics. The law enforcement community has come together. You know, I. It's positive.
- [157:57]
Joe Rogan
We're in a positive direction.
- [157:58]
Paul Stamets
I had my interview by the dea, and they were. I had. I thought they were the boogeyman, man, in the 70s. For good reason, by the way. But I shouldn't say that. But. But I went through my background check and. And the DEA has such a sense of humor. I said, okay, Paul, you know, you come out clean. You don't have a record. Everything is fine, you know, but we have to talk to you about something that happened in 1994 in Des Moines, Washington.
- [158:26]
Joe Rogan
Really?
- [158:27]
Paul Stamets
Yeah. I'm by. What happened in 1994 in Des Moines, Washington? He said, are you sure you don't remember? And they're, they're role playing here. I didn't know it at the time. I go, no, I don't remember. I wonder if sometimes people just confess to something that. Because they're fishing. I don't. I said, I have no clue. No clue. He goes, are you sure? I'm. This is your official response? You don't remember? I said, no, I don't remember. Says, didn't you get a speeding ticket? Ticket? And I said, I paid that. It was from those machines. It was from a camera. I know I paid it. I could dig out the receipt. It was like 35 bucks. And, you know, and they just roared with laughter.
- [159:07]
Joe Rogan
They're just with you?
- [159:08]
Paul Stamets
They're with me. What they told me is that we don't know about mushrooms or psilocybin. We're an enforcement agency. Many of us don't agree with us. Change the law. We want to go after syndication. We want to go after fentanyl.
- [159:23]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [159:23]
Paul Stamets
We want to go after these, you know, these, these, these things that are.
- [159:27]
Joe Rogan
Not beneficial in any way, shape or form.
- [159:29]
Paul Stamets
Said we don't want to hurt the source that is healing us.
- [159:32]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [159:33]
Paul Stamets
But they won't around when it comes to money transactions. Right. Once you involve money, then the DEA is going to be involved.
- [159:41]
Joe Rogan
Right, right.
- [159:42]
Paul Stamets
But you're involved in research. And we, we have strict guidelines. I had DEA license in the, you know, 1975, 1976, 77, 78, through Dr. Michael Buick at the Evergreen State College. And they were much more liberal. I could grow tons of sulcide mushrooms and collect them. And that's why we did a series of conferences. I was the only one that had a DEA license. So we did these conferences, collecting all these experts together with Albert Hoffmann there or Gordon Wasson, Richard Evan Schultes, you know, Jonathan Ott, Terrence McKenna. But I had the license to be able to possess psilocybin with my professor. And so we would have all the psilocybin. So we did these educational events, you know, academic, with citizen scientists and psychonauts coming together. But it's really different is we just had the Psychedelic Science Maps conference in Denver, 8,500 people back in the 1970s. At any moment we were afraid that a SWAT team would break down the doors and arrest everybody. We existed in a high state of paranoia because that was a war on drugs with Richard Nixon. And now it's totally different. Now you have law enforcement officers, you have Rick Perry, you have all these. In New Mexico, they legalized the prescription of psilocybin. This is a citizens movement, it's a democratic movement for the freedom of consciousness. And everyone should have a right, right to be able to practice. And where do you draw individual use from, religious use? Psilocybin mushrooms are very important for my own personal religion. I feel that this is central to my religious belief. So I think this is where the government means to back off. If you're using it for your spiritual development, whether you're a Buddhist or etc, Christian or Islamic, you know, or Judaic, you know, this informs your spirituality, reduces crime, it reduces harm, reduces, you know, potential for violence. This is a game changer. I think we're in the psilocybin revolution. And psilocybin mushrooms are fundamentally different than MDMA and, and iboggang. Just because ibogaine's so long and those heart issues, I just think this is a medicine for our times that can make a paradigm shift for a better society.
- [162:12]
Joe Rogan
I couldn't agree more. That's a good way to end this. Thank you. Paul, hold your book up there, because this is the latest of eight books that you've written Psilocybin mushrooms in their natural habitats. Paul, you're a gem. You really are. You're such an important person. And I think through the conversations that you and I have had, and then you've had on many other podcasts as well, millions and millions of people have gotten to understand what this is really all about. And I think your role in educating people is enormous, but let's be very careful with that.
- [162:44]
Paul Stamets
I'm a one knowledge keeper. Literally, in a string of knowledge keepers, so many people have died, been harmed, and indigenous people. I am carrying the torch, and I want to pass this torch with pride, with dignity, with respect, with kindness, with positivity to the next generation. The next generation needs to be empowered with this, and they can do an excellent job knowing what's happened in the past and foretelling what we could be in the future. The best of the best.
- [163:12]
Joe Rogan
I think you're doing just that. So thank you. I appreciate you very much.
- [163:15]
Paul Stamets
Thank you.
- [163:16]
Joe Rogan
Thank you. All right, bye, everybody.